


The Smash Before the Splash

by HarpiaHarpyja



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Office, Attempted Bribery, Ben is a fucking geek, Ben's Dick: Receding Into His Body?, Bets & Wagers, Can you tell it's fluff?, Chekhov's Cunnilingus, Christmas Fluff, Christmas Party, Cuddling & Snuggling, Dagstorp: IKEA Furniture or Sexy Talk?, Disparagement of Keurig Machines, Eating Cheetos with Chopsticks, Eventual Smut, F/M, Festivus, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Fluff and Smut, Mirror Sex, Morning After, Office Party, One Night Stands, Or Is It?, Oral Sex, Poe In a Speedo, Polar bear plunge, References to Super Smash Brothers, Seinfeld References, Sexual Tension, Things Ben Would Rather Do Than See His Family: Freeze to Death and Sink Into a Watery Grave, Vaginal Sex, Wall Sex, video game references, winter activities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-12 12:17:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16872756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarpiaHarpyja/pseuds/HarpiaHarpyja
Summary: Rey, a recent addition to the art team at a small greeting card company, has been doing her damnedest to acclimate to expectations at her new office—including participation in some less-conventional holiday celebrations. When she learns that one particular coworker stubbornly refuses to take part in the company-wide Polar Bear Plunge, she makes it her personal mission to convince him to change his tune.A story of holiday traditions, smashing of various sorts, and very cold water.





	1. Rebel Scum Code

**Author's Note:**

  * For [reyofdarkness (mitslits)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mitslits/gifts).



> This was written as part of the Reylo Writing Den's 2018 winter fic exchange for the following prompt:
> 
> 'This is Rey's first year on the job and she finds out there is a company-wide tradition of participating in the Polar Bear Plunge on Christmas Eve. She is all for running headlong into freezing cold water and is super pumped, but there is one scrooge in the office, one wrench in the works: Ben Solo, who refuses to participate year after year. Rey is determined to get him to come along.'
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

Rey tilted her head slightly left and narrowed her eyes at a flyer held fast to the front of the break room fridge with a pair of Buddy the Elf magnets (“SANTA’S COMING! I KNOW HIM!” and “SMILING’S MY FAVORITE!”). She had only seen that movie the one time and hadn’t liked it much, but she didn’t _think_ it was related to anything on the flyer. By all accounts it was announcing an office holiday party, but . . .

The Keurig on the counter burbled and hissed, announcing the imminent readiness of her vanilla latte. Or at least the sad approximation of a vanilla latte that the Keurig managed to drool forth every time she deigned to use it—which was often, since individually owned coffeemakers, hotplates, water heaters, and basically any useful _real_ coffee-making accoutrements were banned. (Reason, per Kaydel: They were a fire hazard; though Rey suspected that an office full of grown adults could handle responsible care of such staple appliances . . . but who was she to make such world-changing decisions?) She begrudgingly removed her mug from the machine, took a resigned sip, and heard someone enter behind her as she returned her attention to the flyer.

Not particularly caring who had just joined her, and hoping they might be able to provide some enlightenment, she swallowed and asked, “What the hell’s a ‘Festivus’?” 

She was answered by a sharp, low chuckle and the sounds of the Keurig being prepared for another brew. A groan of annoyance followed, and she figured out why the moment she heard the telltale chortle of the water in the machine beginning to reheat. Whoever it was, they were going to need to wait a bit for their drink.

“Oh, sorry,” she mumbled, still fixated on the sign. It proclaimed, in bold red letters, a “Yearly Festivus Gathering — Come Smash Before the Splash!,” set for December twenty-third, six o’clock, at a local venue she vaguely remembered passing once or twice in her car. She glanced at the calendar on the side of the fridge. Weird day to have a work party—the twenty-third was a Sunday this year. “Damn thing’s slow as hell, isn’t it?”

Rey took that moment to check on who she had inadvertently and unavoidably inconvenienced. _Oh_. She concealed her grimace behind the guise of another sip of watery latte.

Ben Solo, from the writers’ department, known office asshole. Though it had been over two months since she had joined the design team at Rebel Scum—a small, independent paper products company that specialized in off-beat and slightly crass stationery and greeting cards—he was the one person who remained something of an unknown quantity to her. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t tried to be cordial, even friendly. That was hard for her, dammit; Rey didn’t consider herself a people person.

She’d managed to make a handful of work-friends despite that, some of whom she could see eventually becoming _real_ friends. Ben, however, had been stubbornly resistant, beyond even what could be chalked up to professional distance, as if he was the only person in the office less interested in forming ties than she.

In fact, that dry chuckle—maybe it had been a cough, that seemed infinitely more likely—was probably the most reaction she had gotten out of him in a non-work-related exchange. 

“It’s garbage,” he replied, waving a dismissive hand at the machine. “And makes garbage coffee.”

Rey gave a short laugh and nodded, then decided she should leave. She could ask someone else about the flyer. Now that she thought of it, she’d seen a few more scattered around on her way in that morning. Sussing out office culture was exhausting, but Finn would probably give her any info she needed. 

But then Ben opened his mouth, and miraculously, even more words came out. “As for Festivus, it’s Scum’s preferred version of a holiday party. I assume you’re not familiar with _Seinfeld_.”

She shook her head. She hadn’t watched much television when she was younger and still wasn’t much for it. Her preferred mind-rotting hobbies had always leaned more toward video games and hours of creating fanart, which she’d then embarrassingly sent to the likes of Sony and Nintendo and Sega. _Ugh_. Well, she wasn’t twelve anymore, and all that drawing had eventually gotten her this very job, so perhaps she could forgive all the rest.

“Do yourself a favor and watch ‘The Strike’ on YouTube or something,” he said. “You’ll thank me later.”

She doubted that, and she had no interest in doing so. Anyway, he’d answered her question. It was some sort of holiday party, inexplicably scheduled for a weekend. And now that he was acting so weirdly familiar—honestly, where _was_ this coming from?—she felt a more urgent need to return to the solace of her desk and dual monitors.

“Yeah, maybe I will.” She stole one more look at the flyer, a briefer one at Ben, raised her mug in a crooked salute she immediately regretted, and escaped.

❖

“Ahhh, yeah, the old ‘smash before the splash’,” Finn said with a knowing nod.

Rey had just asked him about the office Festivus celebration, fully expecting a less useless answer than the one she had gotten from Ben. To her disappointment, Finn’s was somehow even more cryptic, basically just an echo of the flyer wording. Was this some sort of Rebel Scum code?

“Okay, you’re going to need to be a _little_ more specific than that,” she prompted, jabbing her fork in his direction. “Also, this just occurred to me—‘smash’? Were they intending innuendo, orrr . . .?”

His eyebrows rose. “Where do we work again?”

Rey sighed and nodded over her taco salad. “Right, of course. So, what is this, some . . . office Christmas orgy in a hot tub?”

“Jesus!” Finn cackled, head thrown back and mouth open so wide she could see his molars and (maybe) some unswallowed lettuce. “No! No, it’s just, I guess your standard run-of-the-mill corporate holiday party. More or less. Except, a few years ago, management thought it might be funny to change the tradition up a bit, so now every December twenty-third we . . . you know. Set up an aluminum pole, air our grievances over dinner and drinks the night before the main event.”

Rey was more confused than ever and made a mental note to just Google the damn thing when she got home that night. Everyone here was talking as if this was common knowledge, rather than some holiday she was beginning to suspect was entirely made up.

“What’s the main event, then?”

“That would be the yearly polar plunge.”

“Ooh, we talking plunge plans?” Rose swept in from behind Finn to join them with her own lunch. “That’s, what, couple weeks out?” Her eyes settled on Rey, then slowly widened. “Hah! It’s your first year! You _need_ to do it.”

“Yeah, as your friend, I refuse you let you fall to the dark side,” Finn added. He fixed Rey with a very serious stare. “The last thing we need is more Ben Solo types shitting on morale by sitting out.”

“Hear hear.” Rose banged a palm on the table, just as Ben entered the breakroom. He noticed them—and, no doubt, their sudden and conspicuous silence—then acted as if he hadn’t and made a beeline for the fridge with his typical long, purposeful strides.

“Polar plunge . . .” Rey said in an undertone once he had opened it and was concealed from view. She frowned as she tried to recall why she knew the term; then she began to grin. “Wait, that’s that thing where people go out to the beach in the middle of winter and run into the freezing water, right?”

“Yep! The ocean’s a little less than an hour down the freeway from here,” Rose told her, clearly pleased by Rey’s evident interest—and heedless of whether Ben overheard them talking or not. “The whole team—except he-who-shall-not-be-named—does it every year the morning of Christmas Eve for charity. It’s a pretty early morning, but you get to see the sunrise on the drive down, and there’s hot coffee and cocoa and sandwiches after. It’s a great time, I swear. And, I’m afraid, it’s part of working here.”

“Exactly. No backing out. You’re part of the team now.” Finn smiled, and she was positive she had never seen him look so devious in her short acquaintance with him. “Rose and Poe and I usually carpool, if you want to join us.”

Apparently the decision had been made for her, which ordinarily would have chafed Rey’s very acute sense of independence, but . . . she found she didn’t mind it so much. Not at all. The polar plunge thing actually sounded like a blast; a sort of small, ridiculous adventure in good company. Why the hell not? It had been far too long since she’d done anything like that, and it wasn’t as if she had any big Christmas plans anyway.

“That sounds great.” She grinned again, letting her eyes scan the room. Ben was now hightailing it to the door with a brown paper bag in hand. He caught her eye and nodded at her in what she supposed was meant to be a greeting, but by the time she processed it he was already gone. Which reminded her—”Wait, so you said Ben doesn’t do this thing? Why not? If it’s required, or whatever.”

Finn rolled his eyes. “People have a choice. Technically. But everyone _chooses_ to do it, because it’s fun and a nice way to send ourselves off for the holiday break and give some support to a good cause. Solo’s just a dick about it and hasn’t done it a single year that I’ve been here . . . or before, from what I’ve heard.”

“Really.” Rey didn’t know why, but that fact and Ben’s near-chattiness earlier was giving her ideas. “Interesting.”

“Yeah.” Rose looked at her pointedly. “Why? What, you like . . . have the hots for him, or something?”

Rey scowled—perhaps a bit too much to be convincing. Physically, Ben was not unattractive. At all. He was actually rather distracting in that respect. It was more the fact that he seemed to have the personality of an ill-tempered dishrag that made her cry “No!” in the wake of Rose’s suggestion.

Finn and Rose only found it funny, and Rey waited for them to stop laughing before she qualified. “I’m asking because, I bet I could get him to do it.”

Cue more laughter, from which Finn recovered first. “Sorry, that’s cute, but . . . that would be the Christmas miracle of the century.” 

“How are you planning to do that, anyway?” Rose asked. “Not saying I doubt you. But, you’re new, so maybe you don’t quite get it.”

Something about their flippant dismissal of her proposal only fired Rey up for it more, both the plunge itself and the feat of getting a long-time abstainer to join in. It might make her some sort of Rebel Scum legend, even. Not that she had ever really wanted to be a legend of any sort, but she thought in this particular situation she wouldn’t mind it. Besides, it just didn’t seem fair that Ben got to be, well, a Scrooge about the whole thing. Not when the money all went to something charitable. Not when it was a harmless office tradition of holiday camaraderie. 

Couldn't he choose to swallow his pride for a few hours out of the year? She certainly would have.

“Oh, I get it,” she assured them. “And I’m going to do it. Just watch and see.”

❖

That night, curled up on her couch with her laptop open and Spotify queued up to an unobtrusive Christmas playlist, Rey did some research, and she began to find herself quite enlightened about all the seeming nonsense both Ben and Finn had spouted to her earlier. As the story went, Festivus had been invented in the 1960s by the father of one of the _Seinfeld_ writers—goddammit, she was going to have to watch the episode, wasn’t she?—as a way to sidestep the many commercial and religious trappings typically associated with Christmas. It was celebrated on the twenty-third and included several hallmark events, including a meal, Finn’s aforementioned ‘airing of grievances’ (which she found self-explanatory and rather looked forward to), and ‘feats of strength’, which most sites indicated was a wrestling match . . . and did not seem advisable for an office party.

The research didn’t actually take all that long, as apparently Festivus was enough of a thing to have an ironic popularity akin to that of Pi Day or Talk Like a Pirate Day. Satisfied, she got up to get ready for bed and pour herself a glass of wine, then returned to the living room, stared her waiting laptop down, and flopped back onto the couch to type a quick search into YouTube: ‘Seinfeld’ ‘The Strike’. This was her life now, apparently. 

But as that familiar bass line began to play, Rey could take solace in two things: When she went to sleep that night, she would be armed with knowledge of what to expect for a holiday season at Rebel Scum; and, more importantly, she already had ideas percolating for how to approach her new mission over the next few weeks. Let it never be said that she shied away from a challenge.


	2. The Wager

Late the next morning, Rey intentionally returned to the break room at the same time she had the day before to sacrifice her taste buds on the altar of subpar coffee. And to wait. And to _hope_ that Ben had a habit of returning at the same time each morning. She had just pressed the button on the Keurig when, to her unexpectedly great relief, he stopped in.

“I see you’ve taken to delaying my morning coffee on purpose now,” he said after a beat. 

He’d drawn up next to her but was standing at the other end of the counter. Annoying a greeting as it was, it seemed like a promising start—he was engaging her first. That was helpful, though now Rey couldn’t tell if his words were meant as a joke or not. Was he the joking sort?

“Maybe you should get here a bit sooner?” she suggested. “Though you did say it was garbage, so you could see it as me doing you a favor.”

“Last I checked, it was this or nothing.”

“The garbage will do, eh?”

He chuffed. “Unfortunately.”

Rey considered pointing out that he could just make his own at home and bring it in a thermos for his midmorning fix if it was that much of a problem, but she didn’t think it worth provoking an actual argument with him. So she checked her instinct to find a clever retort and tried a different strategy: appeasement.

“I watched that _Seinfeld_ thing.” She turned to face him, her arms folded. Shit, he was . . . still good-looking. In the sort of way that made her want to look at him, and then keep looking at him, over and over, from every angle. The sort of way that made her want to draw him. God, maybe Rose had been right. For an excuse to look elsewhere, she grabbed her now-full mug, then jutted her chin toward the fridge, still pasted with the flyer. “Festi—”

“Yeah, I know. I got what you meant,” he interrupted. 

“You didn’t tell me about the other part of the Christmas festivities around here,” she went on, as if she was truly pleased to have caught him out on something. “The polar plunge?” He stared at her blankly. Had she not said that in plain English? “The splash after the—”

“Don’t finish that sentence, for the love of all that is good in this world.” He sneered. Actually sneered, as if she’d just set a soiled diaper under his nose. “I didn’t think it worth bringing up.”

Rey frowned. “Stop cutting me off.”

“I—” He had the decency to look slightly abashed. “Sorry.”

“Fine.” She hadn’t expected an actual apology and needed a moment to regroup her thoughts. “Why didn’t you think it worth mentioning?”

Ben cast a cool look down at her. “They've convinced you already, haven’t they?”

“I didn’t need to be _convinced_ —it sounds like fun,” she said. “And like it’s for a good cause.”

He groaned and shook his head, then placed his mug on the Keurig tray and added his K-cup—peppermint mocha, she noted, and stored the knowledge away. Could be useful information if she wanted to butter him up. As he waited for the water to finish heating, his face began to adopt the look of one used to long-suffering. “Been talking a lot about this, hm?”

“Enough to know there’s no good reason to skip it every single year. Why don’t you go?” Rey had the sudden realization that he might actually have a legitimate excuse and simply hadn’t bothered to tell anyone. “If you’re . . . visiting family, or something, you could just say so. I doubt anyone would begrudge it.”

But Ben only scoffed, then prodded the coffee machine impatiently. “ _Not_ visiting family. I’d rather do the damned plunge and die of hypothermia.”

So much for that theory. Rey briefly considered doing a bit of good old-fashioned social media stalking to see if she might devise some way of getting his family to invite him over on the twenty-fourth, thus spurring him to make good on his claim—sans the dying part. That, however, was far too creepy and far too much work for what this was. Also, she doubted he was active on social media platforms; he seemed the type to begrudge them.

“Don’t get any ideas,” he said, as if reading her mind as they stood there side by side. “My family feels the same way about me as I do about them.”

Part of her thought that was quite sad, if it was true, but it wasn’t her place to care or comment. She tried another tactic as Ben pressed the button to brew his coffee—she had thirty seconds, tops, before she would need to come up with another excuse to speak to him at length. 

“It would be a good opportunity to prove everyone wrong. They all expect you to brush it off.”

“You’re making the presumption I care about what anyone here thinks or expects of me,” he said with a tight smile. Rey was beginning to think he was enjoying this. At least that made one of them.

The machine finished filling his cup, and he took it and brushed by her to leave. “Fun chat; looking forward to thwarting your next attempts to change my mind.”

Rey watched him walk out (and ignored the vague but rather enticing smell of peppermint he left in his wake) and grimaced. “Is that a challenge, Solo?”

He didn’t answer. She would just have to take that as a ‘yes’.

❖

Rey spent the next two weeks finding reasons to talk to Ben, which was a bit of a pain in the ass initially but got easier the more she did it. Despite how much he clearly begrudged being expected to mingle with his coworkers, he was impossible to miss, and the office was not very large. So aside from midmorning coffee—which, she couldn’t help noticing, he did not begin to eschew even though he probably knew she would be waiting there—she had plenty of opportunities to accost him at lunch, or be helpful and bring him something she’d seen in his mailbox as she checked her own, or happen to bump into him on the way in (or out!) of the building.

Her aim was to suss out the root of his distaste for the plunge tradition, because he must have had _some_ actual reason, and figure out a way to undermine it and thus show him the error of his ways. Only a few days after her first attempt, it had become a personal goal—it wasn’t about Ben, or Finn, or Rose, or anyone else. The rest of the office be damned, she would be annoyed with _herself_ if she didn’t change his mind. She hated losing, and he had outright challenged her. At least, that was the cast it began to take in her mind. Her pride was on the line, as was the money the rest of the office had been pooling in a bet on whether or not she would succeed.

That was the other thing: no one believed she would get him in the end. They were so confident, in fact, they’d even let her join in, and she was the only one to wager on herself. Ben might not have cared to prove people wrong, but Rey found few things more motivating. The smug satisfaction of knowing she’d won would send her into the new year in the highest of spirits.

Yet as more days passed and the fateful date drew nearer, she was beginning to feel no closer to her goal than she had been at the start. By the morning of Wednesday the nineteenth, she was getting desperate. Desperate enough to become a touch underhanded. Maybe Ben would be swayed by _that_ , if he hadn’t been swayed her general efforts of friendliness, or even that morning last week when she’d left her apartment early to buy him a venti Starbucks peppermint mocha and leave it as a surprise on his desk (though in that latter case he had at least said ‘thank you’ when he needlessly joined her by the Keurig at the usual time anyway.)

She waited until the late afternoon to try to find him. For this sort of dirty dealing, discretion was advised. This needed to be between just the two of them. The ideal moment presented itself when she noticed him get up (at last, a reason not to hate the open-plan office) and exit the building, presumably to get something from his car. Rey waited a half a minute, threw her coat on, and followed to wait just outside the main entrance.

Ben caught sight of her as he was heading back in, and though he didn’t look disappointed, his mouth twitched in a funny way she had noticed he had a habit of but still couldn’t figure out the meaning behind. As was their custom by now, he waited for her to speak first.

Her statement was to the point. “Three hundred twenty-six dollars.”

He slowed and shifted the gym bag he was carrying over his shoulder. “Sorry?”

“Three hundred twenty-six dollars,” Rey repeated. She wanted to make sure he let that bit percolate as she continued. “The rest of the team’s been betting whether I’ll convince you to come to the plunge next week. The pool’s up to six hundred fifty-two, as of this morning, and it’ll probably go up a bit by the weekend.”

“Impressive. You must be very proud of yourself.” Ben tilted his head, regarding her as if he was contemplating how much of his time she was wasting and whether this was preferable to running back to his desk. “And?”

“And? And if you come to the plunge, I get the money. All of it. Because literally no one here thinks you’re going to come. And if I get the money, _you_ get half. Get it?”

A slow smile spread across his face. Rey hadn’t seen him smile before, not like that. Not for the first time, and surely not for the last, she was reminded of how oddly attractive she found him, and added the fact that he had _dimples_ when he smiled wide enough to the list of reasons why. Bastard.

“Ahh, I see,” he said, peering down at her as his breath fogged in front of his face. Another reason: the way his voice sounded when he lowered it like that. “You’re bribing me now? You _are_ getting worried, aren’t you?”

Rey clenched her fists, stuffed in the pockets of her coat. “So what? Take the deal. Over three hundred bucks for what, a thirty-second dip in the water. We all win.”

“No. We don’t.” 

She couldn’t be certain, but she was beginning to think her suggestion had truly insulted him. If that was the case, this was probably the end of her chances, though she would keep trying. When he spoke again, she was positive—for the first time since this had begun, he was beginning to be angry with her. “I can’t believe you’re out here trying to buy me. This is getting ridiculous.”

He was right; this was sort of low, over something so inconsequential. But she’d been so certain it was an irresistible deal . . . and suddenly she was very embarrassed. Did she owe him an apology? She had no idea. Up until now, it had all felt a bit like a mutually understood game. 

“It was— I thought it was worth a shot. I’m sorry. You’re right. Maybe . . .” With a shake of her head, cheeks beginning to burn, Rey folded her arms. “I don’t get it. You refuse to do the plunge, but you’ll come out on a Sunday night to a stupid _Seinfeld_ party, where you’re actually expected to socialize and have a good time for _hours_ with a bunch of people you disdain for some reason? _That’s_ ridiculous.”

Ben drew himself up, and Rey automatically mirrored him. “First of all,” he said, “it isn’t a _Seinfeld_ party, it’s Festivus. And regardless, whatever type of party it is, Rebel Scum’s footing the bill—free dinner, free bar, all night. Most importantly, I win. Every year.”

She couldn’t fathom what he could mean by that, though as she considered the whole Festivus theme a few moments more, the pieces began to click into place, and she only just stopped from rolling her eyes. 

“What is this, that ‘Feat of Strength’ thing? Is that seriously why you go? So you can get pissed for free and win some made-up holiday contest? Are you all insane?”

“Yes. To everything you just said.”

“Oh please.” She tucked her mouth down into the collar of her coat for some relief against the chill. “It’s probably . . . thumb wrestling or something.”

Ben chuckled, and the dimples appeared again, and Rey hated him for about five seconds. “Hold that thought. You’re not so far off.”

She glanced down at his hands. He was wearing gloves—very nice ones, in fact, soft black leather—but all her mind wanted to focus on was that his hands were huge. She should have noticed that before. Somehow, though, she hadn’t, and now all this talk of thumbs and wrestling was giving her strange ideas, and— 

Nope.

“Okay, you’re a fan of deals,” he said when she remained silent (she hoped he didn’t realize the reason was that she was thinking about the sorts of things his hands could do). “How about this one? You come to the party—”

“I was already going to come,” she cut in.

“—you come to the party,” he repeated more firmly, “and you take part in the Feat of Strength, and if you beat me, which you won’t, I’ll come to the polar plunge.”

Rey stared hard at him, seeking any sign of disingenuousness and finding none. “You’ll come, and you’ll participate. You’ll go in the water. Thirty seconds.”

“Yes, sure, fine. All that. But you need to beat me. Uncontested.”

_Which you won’t_ —his words echoed in her head with all their flippant cockiness. There was no way she couldn’t accept. Sure, she had no idea what the contest entailed, but it couldn’t be that bad. He was probably exaggerating his own aptitude for . . . well, whatever it actually was.

“Deal.” That seemingly settled, she stepped aside to allow him to enter the building and followed him though the doors. As they headed toward the office floor, she figured she should find out what sort of feat she’d have to accomplish. A silly party game, most likely. “So what is it?”

“You’ll find out.”


	3. Feats of Strength

She did not find out. Not before the party.

It wasn’t for lack of trying. The problem was that no one would tell her, not even Finn or Rose. The annual Festivus Feat of Strength was, it seemed, a closely guarded company secret, and newbies had to find out what it was the hard way: by being thrust face first into it without an inkling of what to expect, godspeed to them. Ben had clearly known this. Thursday and Friday were a semi-torturous blur of him throwing smug looks her way when their paths crossed and, once or twice, asking her if she was ‘feeling strong’.

Rey still had no idea what she would be in for on Sunday evening as she parked her car outside of The Kanji Club, a popular local haunt that Rebel Scum had rented out for the night. Still being somewhat new to the area, she had never been there before, but as she entered the bar she immediately decided she liked it and would be returning on her own.

The ambience was casual but trendy, with dim lighting and the faint sound of an employee-curated Christmas playlist weaving through the already crowded room. There were no outright holiday decorations aside from an abundance of multicolored string lights woven into birch-branch garlands that hung above the two full bars and around the long, family-style dining tables, each already set with plates, silverware, and placecards. She spied what appeared to be a stage area at the far end of the room, on which was set an enormous flatscreen television. 

For a moment, she wondered if the Feat of Strength would come in the form of a karaoke battle, which she felt more than equal to—but the six squashy chairs arrayed across the stage, in front of the television, divested her of that notion. Unless those could be for judges . . .?

A flash of light snatched her attention away from her musings, and Rey looked over toward a corner near the restrooms. There was a bare aluminum pole set up there, which people appeared to be taking photos with. People including Poe and Finn, who noticed her as soon as she did them.

“You made it!” Finn proclaimed as they made their way over to her, like there had ever been any concern she might not. He held a drink out to her. “Eggnog?”

“Oh, thanks, yeah.” She accepted and had a sip, wincing at the taste but not about to turn down the first of what she hoped would be many free beverages. 

“Goddamn, that is a _look_ ,” he added, gesturing wildly at her sweater. 

For the occasion, Rey had donned the ugliest Christmas sweater she had ever managed to find. It was a thrift shop purchase from a few years ago, when she had been interning at a large graphic design company and was strongly encouraged to participate in their annual ugly sweater contest. She had won, and with good reason: it was at least three sizes too large for her; the yarn was acrylic, itchy, and an utter mess of clashing colors and patterns; an intarsia reindeer was knitted into the front of it, but badly, with lopsided eyes and one antler only half done. The poor thing—someone’s granny had tried very hard, for sure. Rey had made her own “improvements,” covering the rest of the sweater in tiny jingle bells, red, green, and silver tinsel, pompoms, and, the piece de resistance, blinking LED lights that could be turned on and off by a button hidden in the collar. It was hideous and, paired with a T-shirt and some black jeans, looked simply spectacular.

“Thank you, thank you,” she said with a modest nod of her head. “So, this is . . . Festivus?”

“The very one. Make sure you hashtag all your photos ‘smashbeforesplash’ tonight,” Poe said, still busy at something on his phone. Rey peered over and saw he was in the finishing stages of an Instagram post—a selfie of him with the pole, Finn photobombing just behind. “By the way, we switched your place card at the table—Amilyn had you sitting with Hux and Phasma, but we figured you’d appreciate relocating to be with us. You’re welcome.”

Rey nodded, fairly indifferent to who she would be sitting with. There were only three tables, and they were all right next to each other. Surely the eating portion of the night wouldn’t take that long.

“Rose here yet?” she asked, scanning the room again. While she was nominally looking for Rose, she was actually trying to see if she could spot Ben. It should have been easy—he was the tallest in the office aside from Phasma, who was currently milling around with a few others from marketing—so her only conclusion was that he wasn’t there yet. 

Finn nudged her arm with his and led them over to the less crowded bar. “She texted to say she’s running a little late, but to have a Jack and Coke waiting for her.”

Rey spent the next half hour or so with Finn and Poe, and eventually Rose, at the bar, unable to keep her eyes from drifting every few minutes to the mysterious stage setup and, more annoyingly, to the doors. 

Where was Ben? She was beginning to wonder if he had lied to her about his coming here just to get her to leave him alone about the plunge; if she’d truly been annoying him, he would have said as much directly. She felt confident she knew that much about him .Yet by nearly seven o’clock, that thought had become so pervasive and convincing that she was actually almost angry at him when the doors opened with a gust of cold air and Ben stepped through, looking disinterested and chilled from his walk through the parking lot. 

She smothered the urge to excuse herself to go say hello. Maybe even wish him luck. There would be time for that later, before she commenced kicking his ass at whatever thumb-wrestling-karaoke-drinking-contest-mystery-trial was in store. Oh, how how satisfying it would be; nearly seven hundred dollars on the horizon, the glow of a win, and the assurance that yes, she had shown Ben the light, and tomorrow morning he and those stupid dimples and big shoulders _would_ be joining them all for—

“Ummmm, Rey?” Rose pushed a hand firmly into her back and gave her a shake. “That eggnog stronger than we realized?”

“Huh?” Rey blinked and looked around. She’d been staring blankly at one of the garlands, apparently more caught up in her daydreaming than she had realized. She stood. “No? I hate eggnog.”

“Well, we’re all going to go sit down for dinner now, so maybe leave it here and order yourself something more to your taste.”

“Right.”

❖

Dinner was not quite the brief affair Rey had imagined it might be. There were several courses, passed around the table family-style, all of which she wanted to try and soon found herself feeling quite full on barely halfway through. And she was rather disappointed to hear that in light of an incident the year before in which (from what she understood per Kaydel’s retelling) Poe and Ben had nearly come to blows in the parking lot after dinner, the yearly “Airing of Grievances” had been cancelled. 

But that was okay, because it ushered in the event for which everyone, including Rey, seemed to be far more excited—the fabled “Feats of Strength.” She had felt the change in the air as desserts and coffee were being served. There was certainly a new electricity, and though she was yet the only one who didn’t quite know what was about to happen, it was impossible not to be caught up in it. For the first time since being hired at Rebel Scum, Rey felt like she was truly part of the team. It was a far nicer feeling than she had expected it to be.

She was ready. The anticipation had been killing her since Wednesday, the air of mystery around what would happen tonight only compounding her perverse delight at the prospect of besting Ben and proving to herself—and everyone else—that her optimism had not been misplaced. She could do this.

Someone at the other table began to rap a fork against the side of their glass to call for attention, and the sound was soon enough joined by a chorus of several others. As the clinking died down, Amilyn Holdo stood up and cleared her throat. Rey had no idea what her boss’s natural hair color was; since at least October it had been periwinkle, though tonight it was an aggressively bright chartreuse and somehow perfectly complemented her deep-blue silk blouse.

“Attention, one and all,” she called in her rather musical voice. “The time has come to set down our forks and knives”—she paused and heaved a theatrical sigh—“and take up the tools of battle.”

She raised a hand, which proved to be clutching a remote control, and pointed it at the flatscreen behind her across the room. If she was going for a dramatic flair, which Rey supposed she must be, it was dampened by the slight lag as the screen lit up to reveal . . .

A video game. The feat of strength was a _video game. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate_ —that game was brand new. It had been out for barely more than a few weeks. 

There was some scattered applause, some jeers, some cries of delight. Rey chose to join those of the polite applause, but on the inside she was screaming. She had been dying to get a copy of the game but hadn’t yet been able to justify dropping three hundred bucks on the system, let alone sixty more for the game. This was getting better and better. If she won tonight— _when_ she won tonight—she knew where the money was going. 

“Those who wish to partake in this year’s Feat of Strength for honor and bragging rights until next year’s Festivus, please gather at the front of the room and add your name to the list for bracketing,” Amilyn went on as people began to rise from the table and head toward the stage area. “We’ve got this down to a system by now, so all should be ready to go by quarter of . . . I suggest you use your time wisely and get some drinks. If the last few years are anything to go by, this is going to take a while.”

Rey saw Ben getting to his feet at one of the other tables and stretching his arms behind his back. She fixed her eyes on him with what she hoped was a steely gaze until he looked over, raised his eyebrows at her, and tilted his head as if to apologize for the miserable defeat she would no doubt shortly experience. She had no intention of giving her secret away so soon by looking _pleased_ by the nature of the contest, so she just shrugged and made her way up to the sign-up sheet.

She’d been obsessed with the _Smash Bros._ franchise for nearly twenty years. She knew the ins and outs of every other installment like the back of her hand. Smash before the splash, indeed. 

_Well, Solo, I hope you like cold water._

❖

Since Rey considered Finn a friend, the moment she had thrown Chrom—his handsome, princely character of choice—into the abyss of their selected fighting stage as the three-minute timer ran down to zero, she managed to stop herself from throwing the controller down in her excitement (it wasn’t hers, after all), and she managed not to turn to him and jeer. All in good fun, of course. But she _did_ leap to her feet and let forth a truly fearsome roar of victory. She sort of needed to, just to let off steam. After over an hour of on-and-off gameplay, her thumbs were sore, her neck was stiff, and her adrenaline was running higher than it had since that time she’d gone ziplining two years ago.

And she was about to win this thing. She felt it. She’d just beaten Finn, who had been, at that point, the only person standing between her and her final _Smash Bros_. face-off . . . against Ben. 

Ben had at least been right on that account. He was very good, and she could see why he won every year. Half the players in the bracket were clearly just phoning it in for some quick laughs before getting back to the more important party business of drinking and socializing. And those who seemed actually interested in playing approached it with little finesse or strategy. While button-mashing wasn’t the worst offense one could commit in playing the game, it was obvious that Ben applied actual skill, and his focus was admirable. Though she also found herself just as likely to watch the screen while he played as she was to watch the way his hands moved or the way his throat bobbed when he swallowed midmatch. 

That was no good. She was going to need to _focus_ for this last one. She couldn’t let him distract her, and she certainly couldn’t let him win. She’d come too far. Finn gave her a sportsmanlike clap on the back and muttered ‘ _good luck_ ’, then sidled off for a beer before the final face-off commenced, leaving her to settle the jittery excitement building in her belly. In a few minutes, she and Ben would be butting heads in a final five-minute timed round. A moment of truth, weeks in the making.

She sank back down onto her squashy plush bean bag chair and tried to keep a straight face when Ben dropped into the one beside it, but the moment he looked over at her should couldn’t keep from grinning stupidly. 

“You _are_ getting worried, aren’t you?” she asked, echoing his own words to her just days ago after she’d tried to buy his cooperation. It was the first thing she had said to him all night, though not for lack of trying.

He should have taken her offer. Now she was going to beat him and keep all that money for herself, and she would cackle tomorrow morning as he ran down the beach and into the frigid ocean—though considering she would also be wading around in forty-something-degree water, cackling might be a challenge in itself. She wondered if he’d wear a shirt. The black sweater he had on tonight was a good look, and it was enough to make her more curious than ever what was going on beneath it. 

_Ergh, stop stop stop._

“Not a bit,” he told her. He frowned at her ugly sweater. “Everyone else may have been unfocused enough to get distracted by . . . whatever that is.” He pointed at the sad, lopsided reindeer emblazoned on her front. “But forget it. You’re toast.”

She didn’t believe him one bit. He was deflecting. That was good—he was nervous. He probably hadn’t expected her to make it past the first round. 

“It might soften the blow when I beat you if you admit beforehand that I’m _good_ at this,” she said.

Ben groaned and ignored that. “You going to play as Samus again?”

“Why? Will it cramp your Dark Samus’ style?”

“Not at all,” he said in a clipped tone.

“Be too confusing on-screen?” she pressed.

“Please.”

The narrative of the event was evidently enough that they’d drawn a small audience of inebriated coworkers looking for a way to kill the next five minutes between drinks. Defending champion Ben Solo versus dark-horse newcomer Rey Hӧllenhund; Dark Samus versus Samus; a battle for the ages, or at least the remainder of 2018.

_3 . . ._

Rey scootched her butt back further into the chair, her tongue set between her teeth.

_2 . . ._

She let her eyes flick fleetingly to Ben. His jaw was set. He looked like he was about to defuse a bomb. His hands were primed on the controller. 

Why did it look so absurdly tiny when he held it?

_1 . . ._

Her eyes returned to the game. His Dark Samus to the left. Her standard Samus to the right. Battlefield stage set. 

Rey let out a long breath and felt her mind enter that concentration sweet spot where the rest of the room melted away. All she was aware of was her fingers on her controller and the little pixelated extension of herself on the television screen.

_GO!_

❖

Though she could only see him in profile as she approached the bar, Rey thought Ben looked as if he had just seen _some shit_. His expression was sour, and his already fair skin had a grayish cast despite the multicolored string lights. It struck her as rather over-dramatic—it was a game, and she had only pumped her fist into the air and given a very understated hoot of elation as Finn declared her victory the first Festivus Miracle of the evening. Even so, something about how despondent Ben looked tugged at her heartstrings, in much the same way that the sight of a sliver of his skin as he leaned down to grab something he had dropped on the floor tugged at . . . other things.

So she conquered her urge to gloat, even jokingly, and, when she drew up beside him, said instead, “Can I buy you a shot?”

Ben regarded her with such a baleful look that she almost told him to buck up already. But as she gazed evenly back at him, waiting for a real answer, she began to wonder if he also didn’t look surprised to see her. 

When he did finally answer, it was everything she had come to expect from him. “Buy me a shot? You do realize the alcohol’s all paid for already, right? I hope you haven’t been leaving money up here all night.”

“Haven’t been drinking enough for it to matter if I had been.” Rey snickered and shook her head, then sat on the stool next to him. “Forgot for a moment. But the symbolic gesture’s nice enough, I suppose.”

“I don’t need your pity.”

“You are taking this far too seriously,” she said, eying his nearly empty pint glass. 

“Says the woman who’s been on my case for nearly three weeks about the polar bear plunge,” he shot back. “I suppose you must be feeling generous now that you’re a few hundred dollars richer.”

“Mm.” Rey wagged a finger at him. “Not yet. You still have to show tomorrow.”

“Oh, I will.” He said it with the tone of someone staring down the barrel of a gun.

Rey sighed and frowned at the liquor selection, arrayed in neat rows on three shelves in front of a mirror. The bartender had been watching her intently since she’d sat. She looked back to Ben. “Anyway, what’ll you have?”

“Peppermint schnapps.” He hadn’t even looked to see what was on offer.

“Seriously?” 

He glared at her, but there was no real malice behind it, so she just shrugged and waved at the bartender to signal that she was ready to order—Ben’s schnapps, and Fireball for herself, if sickly sweet was the order of the day. 

Once they’d downed them, he looked at her sidelong. “So, you did win. And now you’ve provided a pity shot. Which means you can officially stop pretending to have any interest in talking to me.” He paused, and when she only stared blankly at him, added, “I’ll go tomorrow.” 

The burning in her throat had faded quickly, but she cleared it anyway, then leaned an elbow on the bar and turned to face him. “I wasn’t pretending to want to talk to you.” 

His skepticism radiated off him with a potency that made her want to qualify for honesty’s sake. He probably deserved that much by now.

“Okay, I was a little, at first,” she admitted. “But I’d barely say it was pretending. It was just . . . a reason. To get to know you. You know, you seem to have very little idea how to actually have a polite conversation with anyone, but I like talking to you. Believe it or not.”

“Huh.” Ben’s mouth stretched, just the right side ticking slightly up— _was_ that a smile? “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Do.” 

She ordered a glass of water and let her heel knock against the leg of her stool. They chatted idly for a while about holiday plans beyond tomorrow morning, and he revealed he had as little going on as she did. Rey’s own commitments for the rest of the weekend amounted to getting home after the plunge, having a hot shower, and then maybe indulging in a marathon of Netflix documentaries and stuffing herself with Chinese food until she burst. But eventually, as the conversation turned to a mild debate over whether Netflix was actually worth it when there were so many other streaming services available these days, she couldn’t help noticing how much Ben was fidgeting—flipping his empty shot glass upside down, then right side up again, kicking his foot against the underside of the bar, checking his phone compulsively. 

Just when she was about to ask him if her being there was bothering him, he blurted, “How the hell did you get so good at _Smash_? This has been the company tradition for . . . Christ, ten years? Longer than I’ve worked here. No one’s ever beaten me. And you just march up and wipe out an entire bracket in an hour.”

He was _impressed_ ; enough so that he could no longer hold back the urge to ask her about something that had happened over an hour ago. Rey was almost ashamed of how much that revelation tickled her. Fortunately, the dim lighting hid her blush—God why was she blushing? 

“It’s been my favorite game since I was a kid,” she said. “That’s all.”

“What, like the original?”

“Yeah, that. And whatever other versions they’ve released since. I used to play _Melee_ for _hours_.” She nodded with a fond smile. “Though I have to admit, I miss the original most. Probably just a nostalgia thing. I haven’t laid eyes on an N64 in ages, but I’d kill for a chance to play it again like that for a little while.”

Rey could practically see an idea forming in his head. His mouth did that twitch thing, and his eyebrows rose, and he leaned back a bit in his seat. “What if you didn’t have to kill for it? Still interesting, or is murder part of the appeal?”

“What?”

“I have an old 64. It still works.” He steepled his fingers and looked at her expectantly. “And I also have a copy of the original _Super Smash Bros_. Would you—” He must have realized that what he was about to say could be taken the wrong way, because he faltered. Then he shook his head. “If you wanted to get out of here, you could come by. For a few rounds.”

“Ahh . . .”

“Nothing funny.”

“I didn’t think there was anything funny going on, don’t worry.” 

Rey absolutely thought there was something funny going on—Ben was inviting her over to his place at almost eleven o’clock at night to play video games? Yeah, okay.—and she was also absolutely fine with anything funny he might have in mind. As long as she got to play the game for a while first. And maybe after. There was no rule against them both having more than one type of fun.

“Anyway. Sure. I could use a recharge from all this somewhere quieter.” That was true enough. The party had been fun, but she was beginning to feel drained. “Are you sure you don’t mind? I’d hate to keep you up late . . . you do now have a rather early morning to look forward to.”

She would love to keep him up late. She had an early morning too, and it was currently the last thing on her mind.

“I don’t mind,” he said almost too quickly. “At all.”

He cast a look over at the rest of the party, which didn’t seem to be about to wrap up any time soon despite the fact that nearly all of those present would be at the beach tomorrow morning shortly after sunrise, donning wetsuits and bathing suits and who knew what else. She had to hand it to Rebel Scum—they had stamina, and they put together a decent holiday celebration. As she began to stand, he held up a hand to get her attention. 

“Maybe let’s . . . not leave at the same time, though.”

“Ah.” 

They’d be the first to go. It might be obvious if they did so together. Even if they were just leaving to play video games. _Nothing funny_. Maybe that really was all he wanted to do. Rey was getting way ahead of herself—at this rate it was a miracle she hadn’t started ripping her clothes off right here at the bar. 

She needed some fresh air. “That’s . . . good point. You go ahead first. I need to say some goodbyes anyway.” It was safe to assume he did not. “Wait, here, take my number—text me your address.”

Smooth. Now he had her phone number, and it had felt like a perfectly practical reason. Not like he couldn’t have just written his address on a napkin. But if Ben thought her transparent, he didn’t indicate as much as he entered her into his contacts list and walked off to get his coat. Rey would wait ten minutes or so and then make her own exit. It would be discreet—which was only proper when one had very important games to play.


	4. Very Important Games

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did that chapter count just increase by one?
> 
> Yes it did.

Ben lived only about fifteen minutes from the bar, which was nice; if he lived much farther away, Rey would have had to do some real soul searching about why she was willing to drive that distance, in the opposite direction from her apartment, just to spend time with him. Late at night. When she could be sleeping. Instead of wondering—even now not _quite_ sure—whether he had really just asked her over to play video games, or had some other things in mind.

He had to know how his invitation, and his concern that they might be noticed leaving together, would come off. Right?

When she got to Ben’s place—a condo, nice-ish neighborhood—he answered the door almost the moment she rang the bell, and as he led her into the living room, she was greeted by the sight of the Nintendo 64 up and running, the television on, and their game already loaded. He'd set up a bowl of chips on the coffee table, and he offered her a glass of water and pointed down the hall as he let her know where the bathroom was if she needed it. It was terribly domestic and welcoming, in a way she absolutely had not expected, particularly from him. Between that and the glorious, familiar music of the _Smash Bros_. title screen, Rey began to feel a warm glow of nostalgia. 

They didn’t dither about—by all accounts, whatever ulterior motives he may or may not have had, Ben was just as intent on actually playing the game as she was. So they hunkered down on his couch and launched right into a versus match, sporadically reaching into the chips, quipping back and forth when one of them got a good hit in on the other or to accuse the other of dealing a cheap shot. After a few rounds they had enough of an easy rhythm down that their attention shifted more to conversation as the game itself took a back seat. 

She was still getting used to how nice it was, talking to him. Despite what she’d said at the bar about his shortcomings when it came to manners, Ben was quite witty and proved fully capable of shutting up long enough for her to realize he really was listening to what she had to say. Maybe he had been right; maybe she’d been treating him a bit unfairly the last few weeks. 

And maybe this was all they would do here tonight. That was fine, if disappointing. Rey had been wrong before about plenty of things, including him. At least she could say the company had been good.

“Hey, listen,” she piped up as he deliberated what stage to set their next match. They’d been taking turns choosing the last few rounds. “I was thinking, if you’re really not feeling it tomorrow—forget about it. “

“Huh?” Ben turned his attention to her. 

She wasn’t sure if he’d heard what she said, but she went on as if he had. “I get that you must have your reasons. I got a bit caught up in the idea I could . . . make an impression on the rest of the team if I got you to do it, I guess. That I had been right. It’s all . . . ego. You shouldn’t have to go just because I kicked your ass at a video game.”

His eyes narrowed as he returned his attention to the game. “Watch it, I’d hardly say you kicked my ass. It could have gone either way.”

Rey had to disagree, but kept that to herself. She was trying to apologize for her potentially less-than-good behavior. “You really don’t need to go,” she repeated. “I haven’t even told anyone about our wager yet. They wouldn’t know the difference.”

“Yeah, well, I’d know the difference, so forget it. ” he said. “We made a deal. I still think it’s a waste of a morning, but it’s just one morning. I’ll live. Probably.”

Despite the niggling worry that he was going to hold this over her for the foreseeable future, Rey gave a reluctant nod. “Well, at least let me pay the entry fee for you. For the charity. I’ll have that extra cash from the pool anyway once they see you’re there.” It would set her back another seventy-five bucks, but it wasn’t so bad considering how much she’d be getting.

“Don’t bother. It wasn’t about money.” He frowned a little and rested his controller on his knees, then relaxed back onto the couch to fix her with a look she’d noticed him giving her a few times tonight at the bar, like he was trying to figure out something about her. Thinking back, she was pretty sure she’d caught him that way once or twice at the office, too. “Look, I find out whatever charity they’re putting their entry fees toward every year and then I donate the same amount directly. Anonymously. The rest of it’s a fucking stupid excuse to court pneumonia, but I’m not completely heartless.”

“Oh.” Rey looked down at her lap and then at the nearly empty bowl of chips. Beside her, where it had been nestled in her purse the whole night, her phone buzzed for the third time since they’d started playing. She ignored it. “Ben, that’s— shit, that’s actually really . . . decent.”

“Yeah, well. Don’t mention it to anyone. I’m just trying to tell you why I don’t want your money.” 

“I get it.” 

Somehow she felt even worse now. Hadn’t she come here hoping to get some action at some point? It was seeming less and less likely by the minute. But then Ben cleared his throat and planted a foot on the edge of the coffee table. 

“You know,” he said, “I would’ve done it anyway if you’d just asked nicely in the first place instead of trying to make it some sort of battle of wills.”

Rey gave him a probing look, and he returned it until she noticed his mouth starting to do that nervous thing where his jaw seemed to move of its own accord. 

“You would not,” she returned, a little jokingly.

Ben almost gave a dry smile, then looked away. “Yeah, you’re right. I wouldn’t. But I might have considered it more than I have in the past.” 

Well, if she’d known that, she would have started out a bit less intense to begin with. “Why?”

“I don’t know. I started to like you.” His gaze was fixed back on her face, and she began to feel her cheeks growing hot and a question forming on her tongue—then Ben stood and grabbed the bowl. “I’m getting more chips. You pick the stage, I can’t decide.”

There were only nine options, and they’d already played on seven of them, but Rey just nodded. She was too busy mulling over what he’d just said and the way he’d looked at her as he’d said it to offer anything quippy in return. As he went off to the kitchen, she picked Hyrule Castle and set the game to pause, then reached into her purse to see who’d been trying to get in touch with her and whether it could wait until later.

She had three texts from Finn. 

**11:38 P.M.** _Did you leave with Solo?_   
**11:46 P.M.** _He’s gone AWOL. Saw you getting friendly at the bar. ;)_

Rey pursed her lips. She had left nearly ten minutes after Ben; had that not been sneaky enough? Or was Finn just inhumanly observant? God, she was surprised he hadn’t sent an eggplant emoji.

**12:22 A.M.** _Hey I’m just kidding. Text to let me know you got home safe._

Checking over her shoulder to make sure Ben wasn’t about to reappear, she tapped in a quick reply, happy enough to ignore Finn’s all-too-accurate innuendos. Joking or not, she didn’t appreciate how close it was to the truth. Still, his concern was well-intended and actually quite touching.

**12:24 A.M.** _All's well, thanks for checking up. Hope the rest of the party was fun - see you in a few hours! (UGH lol)_

With that she tucked her phone away, just as Ben returned with their replenished supply of snacks. 

“You need to get going?” he asked as he sat back down.

“What? Oh, no. Not yet. I just had some messages I missed. I have a bit more fight left in me if you do.”

“Good.”

They took up their controllers again and started playing, but Rey was distracted. If Ben had gotten them more food, it made her wonder how long he was expecting her to stick around. Despite her suspicions and the way she had felt his eyes on her, he hadn’t made any sort of move to suggest he wanted to do anything more here tonight than they were already doing. And she’d been losing track of time until she’d seen the timestamps on those texts and was reminded of the fact that the carpool was picking her up at her place at seven-thirty to drive down to the beach. 

What the hell was she still doing here? 

She really needed to ask already. It was heavy-handed, and it might make things terribly awkward, but she was so confused.

“Did you really just ask me over here so we could play this, or . . .” She dared to look away from the screen and at Ben; she was surprised to find he was already staring at her. Yet again. In a moment of doubt, she began to backtrack. “I mean. You did, right? I didn’t assume anything, I know we couldn’t just leave together because of how it would _look_ , not that anything was really implied. To be happening here. Because it’s not. Unless . . .”

Ben’s mouth dropped open a little, and she thought maybe he’d forgotten what he was going to say. “It occurred to me.”

“But wasn’t your plan, exactly?” She was still holding the controller in both hands, and her fingers were still moving reflexively over the buttons, but she had no idea what the actual results were on screen. 

“Should we— It really wasn't the _only_ reason I—” He grimaced and returned his attention briefly to the game, but certainly not long enough for it to make a difference. “We work together, Rey.”

She kept her eyes on him. “I’m aware.”

“And you know how small the office is. This could get uncomfortable.”

“Only if we let it. Right?”

He hesitated, then gave a slow nod. “Right.”

She’d never done an office romance thing—not that this was romance, it was really quite physical, and she didn’t think either of them wanted a prelude to a relationship—but she was certain she could handle the ramifications of a one-off with an attractive coworker. She liked Ben; and she liked the idea of having a sly little secret from their colleagues. And yes, it was a small company, but they were in different departments. They couldn’t possibly be the only ones. Besides . . . 

“You asked me over. And you just admitted your intentions weren’t entirely pure. For Christ’s sake, we’ve practically been sitting in the dark the whole time. If that doesn’t scream _make out with me_ , I don’t know what does,” she rambled. Ben chuckled, which seemed encouraging, so she dared to ask, “So?”

“So . . .” He stole one last look at the television, but she could tell that he was no longer invested in what was going on there. “Do you want to do something else?”

Rey was dimly aware of the fact that the music was still bleeping along, and of the repetitive sound effects that most likely meant both her and Ben’s characters were getting wrecked by the CPUs, but she just didn’t really care. She shifted further down the couch, onto the center cushion, closer to Ben, until the side of her thigh rested against his. “Do you?”

“I . . . yeah.” 

His eyes flicked to her mouth and stayed there. He was staring at her mouth, and she couldn’t pretend she wasn’t doing the same right back.

“Yeah.” 

Rey wasn’t sure which of them moved first, and it didn’t matter because the result was the same—a handful of seconds and she was making out with Ben Solo, on his couch, in his apartment, late at night, in the blinking technicolor glow of her favorite childhood game. 

Perhaps it wasn’t quite that instant of a thing. There was a build-up. They both sort of inched closer like they were each giving the other a final chance to bail. Rey distinctly remembered letting her free hand rest on his thigh and feeling the muscle there tense. Their lips met, and it was all very careful at first. Her immediate thought was that he tasted like the schnapps he’d had an hour or so ago, which made her wonder if he could taste the Fireball on her own mouth as his hand drifted to her waist and his tongue brushed over the seam of her lips and then inside.

The coolness of his tongue and the softness of his lips sent a tremor of heat through her body as she opened her mouth to his and deepened the kiss with a soft sigh of contentment. Doing this with him was better than she had let herself imagine (only a few times, she swore). Ben kissed like he needed her, and God she sort of loved the way his hand grasped her waist and slid slowly up her back as he leaned into her and began to guide her backward. For almost a minute it was blissful—until his other hand came to her face, and they both remembered they were still holding game controllers as the hard chunk of gray plastic collided with her cheekbone.

“Ow! What the—” she cried, swallowing an obscenity as she jolted away and flailed in his general direction. 

Ben, for his part, snapped instantly out of the intensity of the moment and threw the offending object to the floor like it was a writhing snake rather than a toy. 

“Shit. Sorry. Let’s—” He grabbed the second controller from her hand and tossed it to the floor beside its partner, then darted over to the television to turn it off and shut the console down. Still crouched on the floor, he looked over his shoulder at her in the deepened darkness and licked his lips. “Uh. That was . . .”

“Are you coming back over here?” If he thought she was about to realize this was ill-advised after all and tell him she needed to go, he was wrong, wrong, wrong. Yet he still seemed to be waiting for something, so she said, “I’ve had much worse kisses. You’re actually . . . really good.”

Defying all logic, her utterly backhanded compliment must have allayed any lingering doubts for Ben, because he was beside her in a moment, and in another moment she was on her back on the couch cushions and he was on top of her, her legs wrapped loosely around him and her hands in his hair as they got right back to it. She absolutely did not have to go anytime soon. She would stay as long as the invitation remained open. There was no reason she should want this to end so quickly—not with his wonderful weight pressing her deeper into the cushions, his hips rocking against hers in such a very satisfying way, how hot and soft his skin was when she slipped a hand under the back of his shirt.

The only downside was that her previously hilarious sweater was now just . . . noisy and distracting and too warm.

It jingled every time Ben moved back a little to find a new bit of her to kiss. The lights blinked in her eyes and his when they broke for a breath. The metal of the bells dug annoyingly into her chest whenever he pressed against her again. And she was not alone in her deepening annoyance.

“I hate this fucking sweater,” Ben murmured against her cheek as his mouth dragged lower down her neck so he could draw her skin between his lips.

“Yeah, thanks, me too.” 

She found his ear and bit—not too hard, but enough that it drew a sound from him that she liked very much and hoped to hear again soon.

He pushed back from her, getting in another suck at her throat first, then shoved a hand up under her sweater and the T-shirt she was wearing beneath it. “Take it off.” His broad palm cupped her breast, his fingers pressing cool little circles into her skin along the edge of her bra.

“Thought you’d never ask.”

But then he just stayed there, leaning over her, and she had to push a hand to his chest and disentangle herself a bit before she could sit up enough to accomplish the task. When he gave her some space, Rey swiftly pulled the sweater off, then paused and raised a dubious eyebrow at him, tugging at the hem of her T-shirt.

“Hmm, I don't know . . .” she said as he watched. “This too?”

“What do you think?” he replied, already trying to pull her back into his arms. 

She was quite eager to be back in them but slipped just enough out of his reach to get her shirt off before he could distract her from it. Immediately he was staring very obviously at her breasts, and she could see the wheels turning in his head: _How long until you can get her to take the bra off, as well?_ Yet all it made her think was that it was too bad she hadn’t worn one of her cute lingerie sets. Not that it was likely to matter in a little while, but this was literally the oldest and most boring bra she owned. At least it was black. That was . . . sort of baseline sexy, right?

She cast a keen eye over him and, picking at the sleeve of his sweater, said, “You too. C’mon—you think I want that scratchy thing rubbing up on me?”

“Scratchy? Try again—this is cashmere.” As if that was really her issue; she just wanted his skin on hers. But he acquiesced nonetheless, and she was granted a handful of seconds to admire him as his watch got stuck on a sleeve when he tried to toss it aside. 

Rey had no idea if the gym bag he’d been fetching from his car earlier in the week meant he’d actually been going to a gym that day, but he clearly worked out. He was just . . . huge. Not even in a particularly chiseled way—but solid and fit and delicious looking. It was only a slight exaggeration to declare one of his pecs roughly the size of her head, that he had the shoulders of a bull, and that his arms, which had certainly _felt_ strong as he’d embraced her moments ago, looked like they could probably lift one of her apiece. His jeans weren’t particularly low-riding, but she was pretty sure she could make out a faint line delineating the start of that V-shaped muscle she always found enviable—and unbearably sexy. What right did he have to look like that working a desk job? 

She managed not to actually voice that question, but barely.

Before he could get her under him again, she threw herself toward him instead and took him by surprise with another barrage of kisses as she bowled him backward. He toppled awkwardly and landed with a grunt, his head knocking against the arm of the couch. 

“Sorry,” she mumbled, reaching vaguely in the direction of his head as if to comfort him; but his hair felt so nice as did so that she just decided to weave her fingers in more tightly. 

He uttered some reply that might have been words and might just have been a groan of gibberish, and the sensation of one of his hands pawing at her ass sufficiently distracted her that it didn’t seem to matter. She had, of course, been right—every touch of his hands set her nerves dancing and her thoughts spiraling toward all the things they could do if this kept going. Another shudder of heat raced from her spine to her pelvis, where it seemed to pool and build and demand relief.

Desperate to appease that feeling, if only a bit, Rey ground her crotch down urgently against his, squeezed his hips between her thighs, then did it again. She’d felt the faint bulge of Ben’s cock even before they started shedding clothing, but now his growing erection was unmistakable. As good as it felt just teasing herself with the feel of it through their jeans, if she wanted it _inside_ her, she’d need to make sure . . .

His face was busy at her cleavage, so she squeezed one of his shoulders in an attempt to get his attention and assumed the low moan he gave meant he was listening. 

“You do have protection, right?” she asked.

She felt him huff a laugh against her chest as he kissed his way toward her collarbone. “Impatient?”

“Uh, have you seen yourself?” Rey let her hands wander down his chest, her right tracing lower over his abdomen and toward the waistband of his jeans. “I can’t be blamed.”

He had nothing much to say to that, but he did return his mouth to hers for a few moments as he attempted to hold her more tightly to him. Rey indulged it a while, but when he moved on to her neck again, pressed, “Just don’t want to get too into this if you don’t and then be—”

“I have condoms.” He kissed her neck a few more times, more gently than he had been moments before, and let his head settle back on the cushions. Rey tilted a little as one of his legs slid off the couch, and he gripped her hips to steady her. “In the bedroom.”

She smiled slowly and reached down to run her hands through his hair and push it back from his face. For the first time she noticed, as he gazed up at her, that he did so with something like reverence, and it was such a strange thing to realize that she had to look elsewhere for a moment. If he was getting the idea that this might mean more than whatever they did here tonight . . . But when she dared to look back, his head had lolled to the side and his eyes had almost fallen shut. Maybe she had just imagined whatever she thought she saw a moment before. She traced his jaw with a finger until he looked back to her sidelong.

“Should we relocate?” she suggested. “This sofa was comfy for sitting but it's starting to feel a bit . . . cramped?” She gave his chest a playful shove. “You’re too big.”

“Shouldn’t you wait until you see me naked to go making judgments like that?” he asked after a short bark of laughter.

She reddened slightly and snorted. “Wow, confident are we?” 

She in fact had very little doubt that Ben was probably packing, considering what she could already feel of him, but she was hardly going to sit there indulging his ego. Or sit there much longer at all. Ben smirked and, before she could react, got his arms around her again and rolled off the couch to his feet with her pressed to his chest. Her feet dangled awkwardly until he shifted one of his arms behind her knees to support her better. 

“I can walk!” she declared, draping an arm along the back of his neck anyway.

“Yeah, but you don’t know where my bedroom is,” he replied as they moved down the hall. “You could get lost.”

She snorted another laugh and let him have his fun. Truth be told, the way he carried her so easily was sort of a thrill, even the short distance from the couch to his room, where he deposited her on the bed and then turned to the bureau across the room to begin rifling through one of the drawers. While he located what they needed, Rey stood to shimmy out of her jeans as she peered around the room. 

She’d been sort of curious about his place before she arrived and found the living room tidy and comfortable but otherwise rather lacking in personality. His bedroom was less bland—some comic book and graphic novel art mixed in with maps, all framed on the walls; a desk that seemed to be cluttered with notebooks and various sorts of pens; a very full bookshelf; a full-length mirror near the closet doors; and a number of what looked to be _actual fucking swords_ mounted high on the wall above the bureau he was currently occupied with. She had to look twice at those; yep, three swords. 

The sound of him clearing his throat drew her eyes back do to him as he dug around. “Do you need lube or anything?”

“Er.” God no. She dropped down to sit on the bed, reached back to unclip her bra, and dropped it on top of the duvet. “Don’t think so. Hey, what’s up with the Renaissance Faire up there?”

His head tilted back a bit as he glanced at the swords, then he snickered. “Oh. I . . . ah. Collect replicas. Not a lot, obviously. They’re fucking expen—”

He’d chosen that moment to turn around, little square of foil in hand, but had clearly not been expecting to find her considerably more naked than she’d been when he left her there, because for about a second he seemed to forget how to use words. “—sive.”

“Obviously,” Rey said with a small smile and a shrug.

As he approached her, there was something new in his expression—she had never seen him so focused, not even earlier at the party, and she had certainly never had it all concentrated on herself. The way his eyes drank her in and then seemed to bore into her own actually made her shiver; and then he spoke and made her do it all over again. “You seem to have lost some things after all.”

“You were taking your time over there.”

Ben slowed in front of her and leaned to press his hands to her shoulders until she laid back, then lowered himself over her. “I was thinking I would’ve liked to take it off you . . .” His mouth brushed hers, then was at her neck and fast trailing lower.

“Job’s not all done yet.” 

She nudged her hips against his, just before his lips found one of her breasts and circled slowly until they closed around her nipple. His hand was in her hair, and she heard the wrapper of the condom crinkling, and her legs were crooking around him like they had a mind of their own, and shit, shit, _shit_ , he was so hard, and she felt like she was going to combust if she couldn’t have him soon. 

“Definitely not done.” For a little while all she heard was the soft sounds of him kissing her, and what sounded like ‘ _so gorgeous_ ’ at some point. His breath tickled as he pulled back a little and moved to her other breast, dragging his teeth over it gently as his free hand settled and teased almost too lightly between her thighs. “What do you like?”

Just being asked that was sort of amazing—no one had ever asked her that. Rey knew that was sad. And she also knew what she would like right now, in this particular moment, with this particular partner, and it was something she’d wanted to try but hadn’t ever found the right person for. Based on what she’d seen so far, she suspected Ben might be the one.

“I liked when you picked me up before.” She took his face in her hands and kissed him with renewed ferocity. When she pulled back she let one wander down to squeeze his bicep. “Do it again. And fuck me up against that wall over there.”

Ben dipped his face down to kiss her and started laughing a few seconds into it. “That was very specific. And would require considerable upper-body strength.”

“Think you can do it?” 

It was a rhetorical question; if he couldn’t do it, she’d eat her hat. Whatever the hell that turn of phrase even meant. But if he took it as a challenge, even better. Evidence suggested he responded to those with gusto.

“Let’s find out.”

He began to pull away, slowly kissing his way over her breasts and ribs and stomach, stopped tantalizingly close to her knickers (which were slightly less unsexy than the bra had been, at least—there was lace!), then hooked his thumbs into the waistband and pulled them down her legs. He started to suck at the inside of her thigh, and she could tell he was thinking of moving north, which was so tempting . . .

“Stop. I don’t want that.” 

She propped herself up on her elbows and winced She’d sounded far too stern, and hadn’t meant to, not at him. It was just that her last boyfriend had been complete shit at oral, when she could convince him to do it at all, and it had left her rather put off the idea even after they’d broken up. And Ben wasn’t him, obviously, but she didn’t want to risk sullying this one night with him with what might be unsatisfying, uncomfortable foreplay. 

“Oh. Really?” He ran one of those fantastic hands up her thigh, almost soothingly, and his expression was one of mild bemusement. “Is that—nevermind. Okay.” 

He stepped back so she could get to her feet, and let her shuck his jeans and then his boxers down to the floor—and then it was her turn to be a bit at a loss for words. Which was absurd. She had expected him to be on the bigger side and was relieved not to be disappointed, but he had a beautiful cock, smooth and so rigid it was practically vertical, ruddy with arousal and just girthy enough that she was pretty sure she would still be feeling this tomorrow. 

_Good._

“Still thinking I’m too big?” he asked when she continued to look at him as if she had never seen a naked man before. He sounded like he wanted to laugh but was making a concerted effort to spare her.

Rey huffed a self-deprecating little giggle anyway. “Shut it, that isn’t what I meant. This is . . . nice.” 

She brought her mouth to the center of his chest and drew a palm down his abdomen until she reached his groin, over his hip bone and lower still, then took him in her hand and stroked a few times, lightly at first, drawing her finger slowly along the distinct rise of a vein, then increasing her attention near the head when he responded with a shudder and a low groan of pleasure. At his chest, she sucked the skin harder, drawing it firmly between her lips and against her teeth, determined to leave a mark behind.

“Good?” she asked, drawing her thumb in a tight little circle just at the tip of his cock. 

“Mm hm.” He breathed out hard and grabbed her hips abruptly to turn, then began guiding her toward the wall, his mouth hot at her neck. “And better when you let me bury it deep in that pretty pussy of yours.”

When her back hit the wall she was nearing the end of her patience, and the moment he’d rolled the condom down his cock she was on him, her arms around his neck, a leg half-wrapped behind his, drawing him back with her a few steps further down the wall. He lifted her with as little effort as he had in the living room and huffed a throaty grunt as he pinned her. She wrapped her legs more firmly around him, her heels digging at the back of his thighs. He shifted his hips and she altered her grip just a bit—one of his hands had moved downward as he guided himself to her entrance. She felt his fingers stroke with agonizing slowness over her folds a few times, no doubt coating himself, then the tip of him push just inside her.

“Fuck, you weren’t kidding about not needing lube,” he blurted out.

Rey snorted. “You might have noticed, I find you very attractive.”

“Hah.” He brought his thumb to his mouth and sucked something off it—Jesus, it was the thumb that had just been inside her. Maybe she should have let him eat her out after all . . . if he kept doing stuff like that she was barely going to need any coaxing at all. “Comfortable?”

She drew in a sharp breath. “Yes. You’re—” Rey allowed gravity to take over and sank onto him more, unable to stop herself from moaning as she felt him begin to fill her, her muscles stretching slowly to accommodate him, all that hot tension that had been building for what felt like an eternity beginning to find an outlet at last. “Just— keep going. It’s perfect.”

Ben let her continue to take him slowly for a few moments, his hands holding her firmly beneath her ass; and when she squeezed her thighs more tightly around him, he seated himself fully inside her with a final thrust that drew a gasp from them both. He stretched up to kiss her, so hungrily she was completely pinned to the wall, even the slight inward curve of her low back flush against it, her stomach drawn taut. She tilted her hips and grasped him harder with her legs and arms as he began to thrust into her, his mouth leaving hers and returning to her breasts.

With her face pressed to the side of his neck and a hand tangled in his hair, Rey tried to roll her hips in time with his, leveraging herself between his massive body and the wall. But more than matters of balance and rhythm, the only things she was able to focus on for any length of time were the brutally pleasurable press of his cock inside her and the sounds of her skin sliding so slightly over the wall or else slapping against his—and the ones coming out of her mouth, a jumble of swears and moans and mewls she couldn’t recall ever having made for anyone. Over his shoulder, as he continued to rock her entire body with his, she spied that full-length mirror again. Where they were standing, she could see just a sliver of their joined bodies reflected back: the edge of his thigh and shoulder, her elbow and a knee where they bent around him.

Rey nipped his earlobe and tugged his hair, harder than she had yet. The throaty laugh he gave as a response was nearly enough to send her over the edge. Something about the angle of her hips to his and how deep he was had him rubbing almost constantly against her clit, and the stimulation was more intense than she had been prepared for. For the second time she almost regretted turning down oral—but he slowed slightly, too, and it drew her back.

“Move over to the right a few steps,” she murmured when he paused his ministrations to her neck and chest long enough to catch her eye. She jerked her head in the direction she wanted.

He narrowed his eyes but was in no state to disagree, and he shifted them down the wall a couple feet. It gave a brief, rude little sound as her damp skin dragged against it. But she could overlook that, because otherwise this was perfect; if she rested her head just so over Ben’s shoulder, she was rewarded with a splendid view of him bracing her like she weighed nothing at all, and the gorgeous lines of his arms and back, and her own body clenching around him like a vise—and sure, his ass flexing as he thrust into her, over and over. That may have been her real motive.

“Enjoying that view?” 

Evidently her motive was more transparent than she’d thought. She could only reply with a breathless giggle. The combination of his voice so low and husky against her cheek and the growing urgency of his movement against her was just dizzying enough that she tightened her thighs again for purchase as she felt the coiling tension of her orgasm building once more. He hoisted her higher still, with another grunt of effort and the slightest tremble of his arms, his chest crushed to hers, and his hips ground against her just right— 

“ _Fuck!_ Oh, God—” Rey’s pussy tightened around him in brief, stubborn flutters as she came, and she was still somehow surprised by it despite the fact that she’d felt it eluding her for several minutes already. Neck arched back and head resting against the wall again, she was dimly aware of Ben shifting her weight, one of his arms winding behind her back to hold her steadier against him as he thrust into her a few more times and finished so close behind her that she wondered if he’d been waiting for her.

What a goddamn gentleman.

His body finally relaxed a bit as his cock gave a final throb and he slumped with her, sandwiching her comfortably against his sweat-slicked skin, her body still cradled in his slightly quivering arms. “Christ,” he mumbled. His face was pressed into her shoulder as one of her hands cupped the back of his head, her nails scraping idly along his scalp. “I gotta . . . put you down.” 

Rey let her feet slide down the back of his legs and set them carefully down on the floor as the last pulses of her orgasm began to fade. She was surprised to find how briefly unsteady she felt, still sensitive, still full of him softening inside her. He waited until she found her balance, then carefully pulled out of her, a hand splayed at her lower back. 

“I’m gonna go toss this.” He brushed his lips over her forehead, then turned toward the door. “Lie down if you want.”

While he was gone, Rey stretched out on top of the duvet, her toes brushing something she realized a moment later was the bra she’d discarded there earlier. She thought she would probably slip into the bathroom to clean up a bit when he came back, and then . . . she wasn’t sure. Her eyes drifted to the clock on his nightstand. It wasn’t so late that the drive home would be impractical. Though the alternative—not leaving—was far more tempting. She felt really good, her limbs somehow both feather-light from the release and weighted with contented laziness. 

Her eyes were just drifting shut when she felt the end of the bed give a bit as Ben sat down. “Bathroom’s open.” One of his hands slid down her calf to her foot; she twitched a little, ticklish, but relaxed as his thumb began to knead firmly at her arch. “Do you— You can stay. If you don’t want to drive home. I’m not sure how far you are, but I don’t mind.”

“Sure.” She’d said that far too quickly; it probably didn’t matter. They were both tired, and they both had to be up again in a few hours. It was an offer she would be stupid to turn down—a warm bed and a warm body before a very cold morning. Rey sat up and squeezed his arm, then got to her feet. “I’ll be right back.”


	5. The Plunge

Rey woke to the smell of bacon and the sound of her phone buzzing near her ear. Automatically, her arm flopped out from beneath the blankets to quash the alarm, and she was surprised to find her phone facedown on a nightstand she did not recognize. The memory of last night washed over her a moment later, just in time to dampen the spike of panic she felt at waking up in a bed that clearly was not her own. Bleary-eyed, she squinted at the display. Quarter to six—her usual workday wakeup time, though today was neither usual nor a workday.

She sat up, keeping a sheet tucked up over her chest. The room was warm, but not as warm as she had been beneath the several layers of blankets Ben evidently needed to sleep comfortably. At the foot of the bed, in the near dark, she spied what appeared to be a throw pillow until she leaned closer to make out what it truly was: the clothing she’d left scattered throughout the condo, neatly folded, and a bath towel just-as-neatly-folded beside them. With a shiver, Rey slipped out of bed to pull her sweater and jeans on, then grabbed the rest of her things and the towel before venturing out of the room. 

When she followed her nose to the kitchen, she found Ben leaning on the counter. He was dressed in sweatpants and a ratty T-shirt with a long-ago faded logo, hair slightly askew, thumbing through something on his phone. On the stovetop, one burner was occupied by a frying pan full of spitting, barely-cooked bacon, while another hosted a tea kettle, round and red as a ripe tomato. A small brown paper bag filled with something lumpy was resting on its side on the countertop. 

The floor creaked beneath her foot and ruined any chance she had of further observing Ben in his natural habitat.

“Oh. Uh.” He looked up and shoved his phone into his pocket. “Good morning.”

“Morning.” God, she really didn’t want this to be an awkward morning after. She smiled faintly, still too half-asleep and uncaffeinated to offer much more, and held up the bath towel. “This an invitation for me to have a shower?”

“Either that or an invitation to walk around wearing it.” He grimaced immediately, then nodded. “Yeah. Shower’s yours if you want. There are bagels and bacon when you’re done.”

Rey chuckled. He’d made breakfast. Sort of—he’d made bacon. If he’d made the bagels, she would be truly impressed. “Okay. Thanks. I won’t take long, just need a rinse to wake up.”

As she shuffled off to the bathroom, making a quick detour by the couch to grab her purse, she devised her plan for the morning. Her carpool was picking her up at hers at seven-thirty, which meant she had just under two hours to get home and ready for the plunge. Breakfast was handled, so that was good, though it also meant more time spent here than she’d planned for . . . which was fine. It would be sort of like her daily Keurig meetings with Ben, the key difference being that in those cases, she was never pleasantly sore from how thoroughly he’d fucked her hours before. Key difference, but manageable.

She started up the water, stripped off the clothing she’d just put on, tied her hair back to keep it from getting wet, and stepped under the water when it was nice and warm. After a cursory scrub-off with her hands, she decided Ben probably wouldn’t begrudge her a bit of soap and squeezed a dab of cedar-scented body wash into her palm. She’d been expecting something oversaturated with artificial scent and aggressively ‘masculine’ even by men’s grooming product standards, but she found it quite pleasant. As she lathered up, she indulged her curiosity about the rest of the things he kept in the basket hanging from the shower head. _Shower oil?_ —interesting. That explained how improbably soft his skin was.

As she began to finish up, Rey was feeling bold—and like she should probably give herself a practice run of what awaited her at the plunge. She turned the hot water off and waited under the stream. The change from warm to frigid was abrupt. She gasped and made a sound of abject displeasure in the back of her throat because that was all she _could_ do as the ability to breathe momentarily abandoned her. For three seconds she endured the near pain of an ice-cold shower before flailing and shutting the stream off entirely as she cowered against the wet wall tiles. 

Her experiment done, and the results not encouraging in terms of how much she could expect to embarrass herself at the beach, she toweled off in haste and dressed again. It felt a bit manky to be throwing on her dirty stuff from last night. But, she reasoned, she’d be changed again within the hour, so it didn’t really matter, and she made her way back to the kitchen feeling refreshed. Ben was now seated at the small table by the window, flipping through a thin paperback and munching enthusiastically on a bagel loaded with bacon and cream cheese. He nodded at her as he noticed her come in but otherwise left her undisturbed as she smeared some softened butter on the bagel he’d set aside for her and helped herself to some bacon before joining him at the table.

It wasn’t until he caught her judgmentally eying the pour-over coffee maker sitting near his elbow that he spoke, as if trying to preempt any complaints of foul play.

“I was going to offer you some.” His lips twitched; she couldn’t help noticing they looked a touch fuller than usual. She really had enjoyed kissing them, though it seemed they hadn’t quite recovered from just how much. “Forget your mug?”

Mouth full, she just shrugged. He let himself smirk that time, then rose to retrieve her a mug and pour her what remained in the coffee maker. 

“Thanks,” she said, unable to temper the grateful smile that warmed her features as she held her nose over the mug and inhaled the rich aroma. _That_ was good coffee, she could tell without even tasting it. “For all this.”

He was slipping a folded sticky note into his book to hold his place and giving the task far more attention than it warranted. “It’s just bagels. The place is on the corner; I walk there most mornings I don’t work anyway.”

“Still nice. I was expecting to have to scarf a fiber bar or something at home. One less thing to take care of now.”

“Are you far from here?”

Rey licked some butter that had settled at the edge of the bagel off her finger. “Not so much. I think it’ll be maybe twenty minutes or so.”

“Hm. That’s good.”

He slumped back in his chair as he let his legs stretch out beneath the table. God, why was the sight of him in what was basically rumpled pajamas almost turning her on? For a fleeting moment she wanted to go over to him, straddle that big lap of his, run her hands through his bed-head hair, and see what would happen if she started kissing him. 

Rey knew what would happen. She would let him have his way with her—here, or on the couch, or in the bedroom, or back in the shower, or hell, all of the above. The only plunging that would be taking place would involve his cock and her pussy, and maybe his fingers and mouth if she felt like letting him prove her last few years of disappointment wrong; she probably would. More texts from Finn would arrive, a veritable cornucopia of eggplants and peaches and bananas and other sexy produce, and unbeknownst to him, he would be one-hundred-percent correct. So, burgeoning tingles and trickles of desire aside, she did not have time to do anything about them, that was for sure. She took an extra large bite of her bagel, positive she had just begun to salivate for no reason to do with how good the bacon smelled.

“I was thinking,” Ben said after he’d finished off the last of his food. “Do you want to drive down there together? The beach.”

She swallowed too quickly and had to clear her throat, which probably made it seem like his suggestion had bothered her. In truth, she’d been getting so comfortable at the table, she had almost forgotten that she had plans—plans that she needed to be ready for very soon.

“Oh. That would— I wish I could,” she replied, getting her bearings. She _did_ wish she could, to her surprise. “Though, actually, I’m carpooling already. With Finn. Rose and Poe, too, I guess they do it every year. They’re coming by to get me at my place in about an hour.”

“Ah.”

She looked at him keenly, pushing a few crumbs around her plate with a finger as she nibbled the edge of a bacon slice. “You could come with, probably? I’d need to text to make sure they don’t mind, but there should be space in the car.”

Ben looked as if she had suggested he also donate a kidney and a lung to the recipient of her choice. “That’s okay.”

Hoping she hadn’t offended him somehow, Rey nodded and returned her attention to her breakfast.

“Probably for the best. It would be too obvious anyway,” he added. “Going together.”

“Yeah, that’s true.” She let her mouth curve into a wicked grin. “Besides, it might ruin your big surprise entrance at the plunge. The drama.”

Ben snorted into his coffee, and she saw one of those dimples form at the corner of his mouth. “Right, that’s definitely my biggest concern.”

She finished up a few minutes later, thankful that Ben seemed more interested in returning to their usual quippy rapport than getting stuck on matters of where they would both be in a few hours’ time—or worse, making a big deal out of anything that had transpired a few hours before. They cleared the table together and while he rinsed their plates and mugs and appeared to continue his typical morning routine, she gathered up her things and bundled up to go.

A towel thrown over his shoulder, he lingered in the hallway entrance as she made her way to the door. “Last night was . . .”

“Fun?” she supplied. 

Ben chuckled shortly. “Yes, that.”

An understatement on a criminal level, she thought, but if that was it for them—it should be—Rey didn't want to seem like she was getting the wrong ideas by overstating what a great time she’d had spending the night with him. Though, frankly, she doubted she would say no if he suggested a reprise some other time. She was tempted to do so herself. And that was bad. What he had said on the couch before it all began was right: they did work together, and things could get tricky if they weren't careful. If they didn't keep this a one time thing. 

“See you at the plunge?” she asked, hand on the doorknob.

He groaned noncommittally, but nodded and waved a dismissive hand as he disappeared down the hall. A yes, then.

❖

Some time between getting out of bed and getting back to her apartment, Rey had indeed received some new texts from Finn, and again she marvelled at his restraint in the suggestive emoji department.

 **6:32 A.M.** _Still on to pick you up at 7:30? Or should I assume you had a long night?_  
**6:32 A.M.** _; )_

Rey gently replied that Finn could fuck right off, and yes she still needed a ride at seven-thirty, and she looked forward to seeing his smiling face at that time. 

She’d never thought there would be a point in her life that saw her layering her warmest wintertime running gear, a sweater, and her heavy coat over a cute one-piece bathing suit, but there she was later that morning in the back of Poe’s CR-V wearing just that, clutching the coffee they’d brought her (she was relatively sure it had been liberally fortified with rum, but wasn’t complaining) and using her bag as an armrest. Carpooling had been a good idea—the hour flew by as they regaled her with tales of what she had missed after she left the party (a lot of drunken karaoke, it seemed), and despite Finn’s persistently suggestive texts, no one questioned her when she said she’d simply gone to bed and had a good night’s sleep. Which wasn’t a total lie. She was also the only one in the car not nursing a hangover, which she hoped lent credence to her story. Rose, in particular, was barely verbal and guarded the bottle in her hands like it was filled with liquid gold rather than lukewarm Gatorade citrus cooler. 

Yet as they drew closer, Finn and Poe in the throes of a contest to see who could bellow along with the radio more loudly, Rey started to feel a bit bad about leaving Ben to make the trip alone. He hadn’t wanted to go in the first place. The only reason he was doing it at all was some weird sense of now being honor bound due to their agreement—and yeah, to have driven down together, whether just the two of them or in this car, would have raised some questions. 

But she couldn’t help wondering how it would’ve been to go with him. What they would have talked about; what sort of music he listened to when he drove, if he listened to music at all; what her odds were of warming him to the idea of a quickie in the back of his car on the way back from the beach. Just to warm up, of course.

What if he changed his mind after all? Why did the notion of doing this without him suddenly seem so disappointing?

Fortunately for Rey, as she and the rest of the Rebel Scum Plungers (as they were all calling themselves—gross) signed in and prepared for their time slot, there were other things to turn her attention to than whether or not Ben really would show. The growing buzz of excitement amongst nervous and giddy participants. The prospect of hot chocolate and warmed wine after her half-minute of self-inflicted pain. The great number of people who had come in extravagant costumes. Poe’s bright orange Speedo, which had the word ‘SCUM’ scrawled across the ass in white lettering and was held up by shiny white suspenders. 

Despite all that, when, five minutes before go time, Rey began to undress and store her outer clothing in the heated tent, she finally spied Ben. He was milling around the edge of their group and trying to avoid Amilyn, who looked delighted in her glitter-covered bathing suit and extravagant red-and-green tutu.

Rey heaved a sigh of relief and laughed at her own lack of faith, then nudged Finn with an elbow. “Look who’s here, eh? Hope you’re all are ready to pay up.”

Finn followed her gaze, and she felt the precise moment his shock reached its peak. He let out a low whistle. “Ho-ly shit.” He looked at her wide-eyed. “You convinced him? How?”

“Remember how hellbent I was on winning the smash last night?”

“That? If I’d known that was what it would take all this time, I’d have practiced more.”

Rey snickered and shrugged. She wasn’t so sure Ben would have made the same deal with anyone else; in fact, she was positive he wouldn’t have. He’d as good as told her so on the couch at his apartment.

“Why didn't you say so?” Finn asked, stowing his shirt and coat away in a narrow locker.

“I didn't want to make it all about that.” There had been other reasons at the time, but this was the only one that still seemed to matter. Something between her and Ben alone.

She looked over at Ben again, hoping he’d noticed her. He hadn’t—maybe even on purpose—but he was unzipping the black hoodie he’d worn, and then reaching back to pull his shirt off, and Rey was biting her lip when someone grabbed her shoulders and shook.

“Scrooge’s saggy nutsack, you did it!” Poe crowed, his voice lost in the din of excited plunge-goers. “I’m not even mad you’re getting everyone’s cash; you deserve it. The second Festivus miracle!”

“Does it still count as Festivus if it’s Christmas Eve?” Rose asked.

“Probably not.” Rey reached up to tie her hair back into a bun, well out of the way of any water that might be inclined to splash up, and hopped up and down a few times to settle her nervous excitement and get her blood pumping. Best to build up whatever body heat she could. “I’m okay with this particular miracle fading into company obscurity after today.”

❖

No one was running. She had been expecting running. Maybe even jogging. But, at best, the majority of plungers were simply walking down the beach at an accelerated pace, toward seawater painted blinding white-bright by the sun overhead. Weirdly, the seeming lack of urgency only intensified the dread she was beginning to feel. Rey knew what awaited; something far worse than her little cold-water experiment in the shower.

Was she still stoked for this? Hell yes. Was her stokedness now muffled beneath a blanket of common sense and _what the fuck have you gotten yourself into, Hӧllenhund?_ Also yes.

But she’d seen the people coming back from earlier time slots. They looked fine. Vaguely traumatized, perhaps, but they were laughing, and joking, and shaking as they flocked back to the heated tent for layers of warm clothing and styrofoam cups of steaming drinks. If she hadn’t come here expecting any of that, well, she was fool. Rey took a deep breath and continued her brisk march down the more-than-brisk beach, grateful at least for her one-piece and the fact that Finn, Rose, and Poe were intent on keeping a hand apiece on her, like they were proud to be offering her up as a new tribute to the gods of winter and wanted to make sure they got the proper credit.

In which case, where the bloody hell was Ben? She had a couple hands she wanted to lay on him about now. A pec for each palm, that was all she asked. It would restore her resolve, she was certain, and maybe warm her fingers up a bit.

As she and the group of roughly seventy other people reached the shoreline and their feet hit the water, everyone began to do a funny sort of foxtrot. Wow, this was terrible. Her toes felt like they were full of pins. A moment later the laughs and cheers were threaded through with shrieks of alarm and colorful curses—most of the group weren’t even up to their hips yet. Rey would hold out, clinging to her dignity as she trotted along with the others . . . until suddenly her three guardians brushed past her at a jog and disappeared into the fray, Poe leading the charge, white suspenders shining in the sun.

Get in deep enough that the water reached her waist, wait thirty seconds, get out: that was Rey’s goal. But she was up to her thighs now and already shaking, laughing at herself because if she didn’t she might scream, arms wrapped tight over her chest uselessly in a bid for warmth as the water sucked what felt like all the heat from her body through the sensationless lumps that were her feet. She began to run through questions she was fully unequipped to answer; she knew next to nothing about biology.

Could her blood literally turn to ice in her veins? Could her muscles freeze so badly that they never worked properly again? How many minutes until permanent nerve damage set in? Was it possible to snap a toe off in this sort of situation? Heart palpitations: normal reaction, or sign of impending death? Both?

“HOLY _FUCK_!” she shrieked as she took another step forward—into a dip in the sand she did not know was there—and sank not just up to her waist, but to her chest. Her questions took on a more frantic and far less lucid cast. Was her heart stopping? Could her lungs expand? Did she even have a body anymore, or had she ascended to some higher plane? If she was on a higher plane, why did everything hurt so much? She gasped for breath, struggling to find it. When she did, she had nothing coherent or G-rated to offer. “Nope n-n-n-nope nope shhhhit fuck f-fuck _fuckfucfuckfuck_ whothefuckdoesthissortof—“

In her whirlwind cloud of obscenity and desperation to get back to a point where less than half her body was submerged in a watery hell, Rey lost her balance and began to tip as she stumbled backward, right into a very cold, slippery, and solid something.

“I hope y-you’re . . .” Two shaking hands closed on her upper arms and pulled her a couple steps as she found her feet again. “You’re f-f-fucking pleased w-with yours-s-s-self.”

She shuffled backward, bowling into whoever had come to her aid and belatedly stopping herself when her mind finally caught up enough to suggest she was probably about to knock them flat on their ass . . . and that she knew that voice, even if she’d never heard it in a fit of stuttering. Rey turned awkwardly and looked up at Ben.

“This-s-s-sucks,” he hissed. 

From where she stood, she had a faceful of his chest, which under any other circumstance would have been welcome indeed. Right now, all she noticed was the flurry of little beauty marks that dotted his skin even there, and that he had a rather sizeable bruise on his left pec—no, that was the hickey she’d left and forgotten about until now. She did not have the presence of mind to further admire her handiwork. He kept moving his arms up and down, like he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to wrap them around himself or just keep them as far out of the water as possible, and the rest of him was shaking as uncontrollably as she was. 

If Rey’s blood had still been moving, she might have been able to blush. And if her lungs had still been working, she’d have attempted a laugh, or teased him about it all. Instead, all she managed was a very sad, high-pitched, “Ye-yeah.”

“I’m p-p-pretty sss-sure my dick’s rece-ceding into my b-b-b-body.”

Tragedy of the century, if that were the case. 

“S’been long e-n-n-nough,” she muttered through chattering teeth. She only meant the time they’d been in the water and hoped he didn’t think she was opening up the forum on matters related to the state of what was happening between his legs. “D-don’t you think?”

“F-f-fuck yes.” 

Ben grabbed her arm in a hand that felt as if it were made of frozen hamburger meat and turned to go, tugging her along with him as they waded the short way back to shore. It was funny, because they weren’t very far at all, but it had felt like miles coming out. As Rey dragged herself miserably out of the water, feeling the initial shock fade into a shy wash of euphoria over her otherwise numb body, she spied the flash of orange that was Poe, already by the tents. Finn and Rose were not far off, snatching up their bags and disappearing into the safety of the heat. She wanted to be annoyed at them for abandoning her, even if it had only been by accident, but she couldn’t muster it. Her only priority now was warmth, and she darted, tripping over her own nerveless limbs every few steps, toward the nearest tent with Ben in tow.

❖

As Rey danced from foot to foot along the canvas wall of the tent, now fully dressed and with a cup of hot cider and whiskey in hand, she had never been more grateful for the existence of sweaters in her life. The fact that she still had Ben at her elbow was a significant bonus. He had been recovering about as well as she was, back in his sweatshirt, the hood pulled up over his hair, a few last tremors making his hands shake as he enjoyed his own drink. It was sort of fitting, she supposed, that she should end up with the only other person from work who had been doing this for the first time.

“They shouldn’t be encouraging us to drink,” Ben groused, even as he took a hefty swig from his cup, which Rey knew for a fact was more whiskey than cider. “Alcohol lowers your core temperature.”

Rey snorted with suppressed laughter, which was a mistake, because her drink went down the wrong pipe as she did so, and she began to splutter. She pounded her chest with a closed fist a few times before she could respond. “That’s the thing you’re choosing to focus on now?”

He shrugged, and she saw he was still shaking a bit, even now that they’d been huddled around a space heater and dozens of other participants. She stole a look over her shoulder—they’d ended up in a different tent than the majority of the other Rebel Scum staff, but she wanted to make sure she was at least trying to be discreet—and nudged a bit closer to him when she decided the coast was clear, until her shoulder rested against his chest. He glanced down but didn’t say anything to deter her.

“Was it everything you hoped?” he asked. She felt another tremor roll through him and down her arm. “Already looking forward to next year’s?”

She tilted her head and tried not to wince. She could tell from the way he was asking that he thought he would at least be granted the privilege of gloating over her admission that she had been wrong and that the plunge really was the stupidest way to spend a free morning.

“Ah. Well. Let’s say if you asked me when I was in the water, I’d have said it was a terrible mistake and possibly asked you to put me out of my misery.” 

A look of smug satisfaction spread over Ben’s face, and for a moment all she wanted to do was think of the many ways she would be happy to wipe it off. 

“ _But_ ,” she went on, holding up a finger to cut off any snide reply he might have had brewing, “with the benefit of hindsight—yes. This was fun. And while I am happy that I have over three hundred days to spend _not_ throwing myself into freezing cold water, I will also be happy to do it again when the time comes.”

“Liar.”

“Nope. I might even wear a costume next year. You should consider it.” 

He rolled his eyes and dipped his chin to have another drink too late to hide the smile forming on his lips.

“And I’m glad you came, too,” she added, seeking his eyes. “I really am. It was nice not to be the only first-timer.”

“A case of misery loves company?” he asked.

“Exactly.”

He’d stopped shaking, finally, so she gave him a little more space and huffed out a long sigh. She would probably be well served to go off and find her ride soon, and make sure to talk to Amilyn, who had been in charge of the betting pot. There was also talk of some people stopping for food and drinks on the way back—it was barely past ten in the morning, last she’d looked, but it _was_ a holiday—and she didn’t really want to miss out. There were some snacks available, but somehow thirty seconds in the water had amounted to a ravenous appetite that Rey did not think would be quelled by a bag of Herr’s sourdough pretzel nuggets and a hot dog. 

“Speaking of company,” she said, “want to get a bite closer to home? Some of the others are planning to hit the Space Diner.”

“Can’t. Thanks, though.”

Rey narrowed her eyes. “I know you don’t have plans. You can just say you don’t want to.”

“Fine. I don’t want to.” He shrugged and drained the rest of his cup, then squeezed the rim of it until it cracked a bit in his hands. His gaze fixed there for a few seconds, and he licked his lips before looking back to her. “What about you? Your plans for tonight . . . changed any?”

“Er. No, not really. Still planning on a night in.”

“Early bedtime?”

What was he . . . oh. Rey fought a tiny smile and watched the contents of her cup slosh around as she tilted it. She hoped that mysterious sediment at the bottom was just cinnamon. “Not necessarily. Why?”

“You could come over again,” he said. “If you wanted to be slightly less alone for your takeout eating and Netflix binging.”

The alarm bells Rey had been expecting to go off should this specific situation arise—Ben showing interest in spending time with her outside of work again, with the implication of _more_ —gave a pathetic attempt to warn her and then fell silent. Though tempted that morning, she probably would have managed to keep herself from asking him something similar. The office was closed until the new year, which meant they’d have had over a week without seeing one another and thus a decent amount of time for any lingering weirdness or curiosity from the night before to peter out. But he’d had to go and ask, and then look at her with a mix of hopefulness that she would say yes and regret that he had asked at all.

She _should_ say no. Not let this become a thing. A habit. Except she sort of wanted it to. She wanted to spend the rest of the day with him. And the evening. Maybe even tomorrow morning. Saying yes would be risky and novel. It would put her in a vulnerable position—but then again, so had practically everything she had done with him since last night.

“Or not,” Ben tacked on when her silence began to drag for what must have been too long as she weighed the pros and cons. “Sorry. I know what we said last night.”

“Yeah, I know.” She shoved her free hand into the pocket of her coat. “But we didn’t say it had to be just the once.” 

They hadn’t said it; she’d just assumed it. She was allowed to change her mind. Was it too weird to think of this as a Christmas gift to herself? It was an overindulgence for sure. It had been far too long since Rey had allowed herself anything like that. 

“What time should I come by?”


	6. Chekhov's Cunnilingus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks y'all for reading, this was fun. And thank you to my two beta-readers - Rey would never have gotten her, ah, due (and this chapter would never have gotten its title) without your help.
> 
> Finally, thanks to reyofdarkness for this delightful prompt. Hope you enjoy where it all ends. :) Happy holidays!

It was nearly eight at night, and Rey was turning her car into Ben’s development for the second time in the last twenty-four hours. The plastic bag of Chinese food on the passenger’s seat crinkled and tipped ominously as she took the last turn a bit more sharply than she’d meant to, but maintained its upright position. That was nice, because the last thing she needed was for the interior of her car to be coated in hot and sour soup a mere minute before she arrived for what was really a bog-standard Christmas booty call. 

Everyone had those, right? Not a big deal.

Yet for something that was Not a Big Deal, Rey had spent far too much time in debate with herself over whether this thing with Ben tonight was a date. In truth, she had only devoted about a half hour to the question, but even that was too much brain power wasted on something that should have been apparent. No, it was not a date. It was two lonely-ish people spending a holiday together (which was sort of sad), with the promise of sharing mutual interests, food, and sex (which was less sad). In fact, it was the perfect evening in many respects. 

Rey did make _some_ effort this time, because she knew what she was in for, and she liked to do things right. This time, tacky sweaters would not be invited to the party. She’d taken a gloriously hot shower, and she had shaved her legs for the first time in almost a month and a half. And she’d found her sexier underwear, bunched up at the back of her dresser drawer—a lace set in her favorite shade of dark green, which she supposed was seasonally appropriate. 

Otherwise she had dressed comfortably, keeping up the ruse of a lazy night in and hoping to give Ben a bit of a surprise when he got her out of her joggers and raglan. She hadn’t bothered trying to decide whether she wanted to invite him to her place instead in the interest of equity. Logic dictated: his place was bigger and more private, and her going there was less personal on her end of things. Also, she could not imagine her bed accommodating him comfortably for long, and she hoped to spend most of her time with him tonight in a bed, or at least horizontal. She did, however, insist on footing the food bill, as after winning the office betting pool she was several hundred dollars richer. This was, after all, the season of giving.

It was a relief to find that, when he answered the door, Ben seemed much less uncertain than he had last night as to what they would be doing. While his invitation had been blatantly obvious this time, Rey had still been half expecting him to drag her through another fun yet somehow grueling hour of whatever cover activity they’d chosen this time. Dinner and Netflix, wasn’t it?

And he _did_ have Netflix going—or something streaming, at least, though she was pretty sure it was in Swedish, and leave it to him to be watching some sort of weird Scandi noir alone in his condo on Christmas Eve—but as they were unpacking the food in the kitchen, he halted in the midst of passing behind her and drew nearer instead. She felt his hips pressing against her ass, then saw his hands splayed on the countertop on either side of her, boxing her in. He brought his face near enough to her neck that she could feel his breath as he asked, “Are you actually hungry right now?”

Rey was a little hungry right now; but the low hum of his voice was vibrating along her spine as his chest brushed her back, and she also thought she would enjoy the food far more if she worked up a better appetite before indulging.

They were making out on the couch a minute later, their plates and dinner forgotten on the counter. As she straddled Ben’s lap and kissed him, his face held firm between her hands while his own hands roamed beneath the back of her shirt, she had to wonder why it was they’d come out here rather than gone directly to his bedroom. Was he afraid she’d forget about the food after? She most certainly would not. Was the Scandi noir setting some sort of mood for him? Maybe she should try to remember the five words of Swedish she had picked up during copious IKEA trips shortly after her move to the States. Said the right way, perhaps even “Dagstorp” could be made to sound sexy.

On second thought, maybe she should stretch over to grab the remote and click the TV off altogether.

But when she opened her mouth to ask between kisses, all she actually said was a hurried and mumbled, “I’m so glad you asked me over again,” before her tongue was back in his mouth.

He tugged the collar of her thin raglan shirt to the side enough to bare where her neck sloped to her shoulder and began pressing little kisses there. One of his fingers hooked beneath her bra strap to push it aside as well. “I’m glad you accepted.”

“I kept thinking”—she paused to kiss his chin—“thinking I might”—his throat—“might ask you myself”—the pulse point beneath the soft slant of his jaw—“but worried you'd think”—ooh, she liked that pulse point, where he smelled faintly of that soap she’d used in the morning, so she stayed there—“I had the wrong idea about this being more than it is.”

_Shut uppppp…_

“Yeah, me too,” he admitted, or rather purred, as she was really going to town on his neck, and he was doing nothing to hide how much he was enjoying it. “It's—” He hissed a sharp little breath when she lost her balance and rubbed against him a bit harder than she intended as she caught herself. “I know why you came. Had just the right idea.”

With that he half stood, an arm looped under her ass to maintain the closeness of their bodies and keep her from slipping, and turned so that she was beneath him as he stretched out on the couch, a thigh between her legs. He kissed his way from her chin, over her jaw, up to her ear, then nuzzled her there so gently it made his next words far more enticing than they would have been otherwise. 

“You gonna let me fuck you with my mouth tonight?”

The tentative roll of heat in the general region of her belly was suddenly an un-coy throb of need centered perfectly on her pussy. Rey angled one of her legs out a bit more and kneaded her foot down his calf, then issued an almost nervous giggle. 

“Is that why you wanted me back?” She was stalling. She couldn't help it. “So desperate for a taste?”

“I wanted you back because I like you.” The husky murmur in his voice did not belie his sincerity, nor did the salacious way he sucked at the hollow of her throat the next moment. “But you can't expect me not to be curious when the rest of you is so delicious.”

Tickled and tingling with how much she wanted him to plow her right into the couch cushions, Rey only arched her body into his with another laugh. “What are you, a vampire?”

“Hah. Legend suggests I'd be better at the whole seduction thing if I were.” One of his hands was between their bodies, sliding over her joggers until his palm pressed to her inner thigh, the edge of his hand pushing just enough against her crotch that she felt another little rush of damp heat that made her clench her thighs reflexively. “So . . .?”

“Holy shit.” She was surprised by how breathy her voice had become. “You . . . _really_ want to, don’t you?”

He leaned his head away to look her in the eyes, and she saw a shadow of that expression he’d had last night—dawning confusion. “Why wouldn't I?”

Rey tried to think of how to explain without it sounding ridiculous, and the longer she waited the more foolish she felt. He wanted to. She didn’t have to explain anything about what she hadn’t wanted last night, or why she wanted it now. She thought she wanted it now—though that little voice in the back of her mind still prodded at her anxieties. She was hesitating, and he noticed. Already he was shifting back more, rolling to his side so that they were face to face, his body squashed between hers and the back cushions.

“Fuck, sorry. Am I being an asshole?” he asked, looking for the life of him like he would believe her all too readily if she said he was. “I thought it was just something you didn’t want last night.”

“Ben . . .”

“If it’s a thing for you, that you don't like . . . I won’t bring it up again.”

Rey shook her head and wove her fingers into his hair behind his ear. “It’s . . . a bit of a thing. But I’ve sort of been kicking myself for turning you down last night since— God, almost right after I did.”

“Oh.” He nodded slowly, leaning his head into her touch. “Is it harder for you to come that way, or something else? Because I really don’t have any other plans tonight, so I’m in no hurry.”

“I don’t know.” She frowned; that wasn’t true. “I mean, it’s not harder for me. It’s been a while since I enjoyed it.” 

With a little huff, Rey shifted onto her back and looked at him sidelong, her hand settling on his where it rested over her stomach. She felt like she could trust him enough to tell him more. 

“It’s been a couple years since I’ve dated anyone.” _Not that this is a date, NOT THAT THIS IS A DATE._ “Been with anyone at all. And the last guy I was with, for a while, _was_ an asshole. He’d act like it was a . . . bloody chore if I asked him to go down on me, and he was shit at it, and say that it was ruining the mood for him. So after a while of that it started ruining the mood for me too.”

Saying it aloud, she felt so silly, especially since Ben had asked her over to fuck, not to listen to her vent about some guy he’d never met and that she hadn’t seen in almost two years. This was definitely a breach of booty call etiquette. Was casual sex supposed to be this hard to navigate?

“Fuck that guy,” he said after a moment. He sounded like her ex had done something to offend him personally.

Rey raised an eyebrow. “I did. Often. For some reason I kept expecting it to eventually get better.” She shook with a short burst of laughter. “Sorry, this is definitely a mood ruiner.”

“Not so much.” His hand was back at the apex of her thighs, or maybe it hadn’t left to begin with. As his thumb traced an arc back and forth along the crease of her hip, his eyes did some tracing of their own down the length of her body reclined beside his. “Are you still kicking yourself over last night?”

“I’m open to having my mind changed.”

He grinned so wide she got the benefit of two dimples, then became so lascivious that she had to kiss it right off his face. Which he indulged, for a good minute or two, long enough for her to pull his shirt off and toss it somewhere behind her head, at which point he seemed to feel compelled to remind her, “You do realize that means I should probably get these off you at some point?” Kneeling between her legs, he ran a finger along the inside of her waistband again, then lifted her shirt and pressed his lips to her stomach. “For the mind-changing to commence.”

“Actually, glad you brought that up— Lemme up a second.” 

She gave him a trollish and probably very unsexy grin, groping at his chest until he acquiesced. With little grace, Rey rolled to her feet and turned to face Ben, who was still half folded over himself on the couch and looking slightly perplexed by the seeming interruption. But she had worn the sexy underwear, and she was going to make damn sure he saw her in them as they were meant to be seen for at least a few seconds.

“What are you—oh.” Ben swallowed a laugh and tried to school his features as she stripped off her joggers and shirt. “Oh my. Okay.”

She narrowed her eyes at him and straightened up. “Something funny? I’ll have you know I worked very hard to unearth these from the depths of my dresser drawer.” She tossed her shirt at his face, though he dodged it easily.

“And not for nothing. A string of lights and you’d make a very sexy Christmas tree.” 

“Oy.”

“ _Oh Höllenhund, oh Höllenhund_ ,” he began to sing, not half badly and in a way that sort of made her want him to continue; though the last thing she had expected to get out of tonight was a rendition of “O Tannenbaum” with her surname taking the place of the titular holiday symbol.

And she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing she was finding his antics amusing, even if he sort of had a point . . . this was the last time she wore evergreen-colored lingerie on Christmas Eve. If this was how he was going to be about it, next time she would go full kitsch. 

_Next time?_

She adjusted the bra a bit to improve its effect on her cleavage. “Still better than the ugly sweater, no?”

“Much.” Grinning, he reached forward with one long arm and wrapped it around her waist to tug her closer until she was standing between his knees. His eyes roamed and lingered over every inch of skin, like he was trying to decide where to begin. “Someone knew she was getting lucky tonight.” 

He let a cupped hand trail from the side of her face down to her shoulder, then further to her breast. With a thumb he traced the faint outline of her nipple through the lace until it began to tighten as his other hand massaged her thigh and rubbed little circles over the lace at her hip. 

With a low snicker, she leaned forward to catch his lips with hers. His head tipped back and his hands settled at her waist, and he kissed her with an enthusiasm that made her more eager than ever to have all his attention between her legs. “I had some ideas.”

He nipped her lip before he drew back, then began to kiss his way down her stomach, hands splayed over her ass to hold her in place when she swayed and tensed a little at the touch of his mouth to the ticklish spots near her ribs, pausing only when he reached her mound to draw his teeth lightly over her through the thin scrap of lace. 

“So did I. About how I sucked you off my fingers last night,” he mumbled between teasing little bites, his thumb following the damp line of skin just past the crotch of her underwear. The heat of his breath there was doing more for her already than she’d been expecting. “I’ve been thinking all day about doing it again. You’re so fucking sweet, you have no idea.”

Rey felt her face burning with pleasure and surprise, and another flush of warmth as her clit gave a tight, demanding throb. He pulled her knickers slowly down her legs, sucking at the curve of her right hip, and waited for her to step out of them before shifting over and patting the seat at the end of the couch.

“Sit here. Get comfortable.” 

He gave her ass a playful whap with his palm as she moved to do so, which earned him a yelp and a return backhand to the chest. Rey sat back down and tried to get comfortable and not think about how her bare ass was now on his couch as Ben slid off to the floor in front of her. It was not a smooth motion at all, and he landed so heavily and loudly that for a moment Rey thought he had simply fallen off the sofa in his haste to get on his knees. 

On his knees—he was on his knees for her.

Suddenly her heart was skipping along even faster, the previously pleasant heat in her face was almost prickly, and she felt like all she wanted was to be wrung out. She let out a shallow sigh and parted her legs to give him room, a knee on each side of his hips, her posture slouched as she tried to ignore the small but pervasive tremor of her limbs. It was eagerness, mostly, yet she couldn’t stop thinking how ridiculous it was to be nervous, especially considering nothing he saw of her tonight would be new to him. But this was always the part when she began to realize she was about to be disappointed. 

Except she didn’t feel that way at all right now. Ben rested his chin on her knee, his hands cool and somehow light on the top of her thighs, long fingers spread and moving idly over her skin. 

“If you’re not enjoying it,” he said, eyes fixed on her face, “tell me and we can do something else.”

Rey smirked and ran a hand through his hair, tugging once for pique. “That won't be necessary.” 

She hoped. Fuck, that would be embarrassing. And probably the end of whatever arrangement they were currently flirting with.

He grasped her hips and pulled her slightly further toward him, until her ass was resting at the very edge of the couch, then stretched up to press his mouth to her belly again, tongue probing teasingly at her navel, teeth scraping at her hips.

“Try to relax,” he said quietly. His lips were still wandering over her skin, just exploring, so warm and soft, his hands massaging over the underside of her thighs like he was trying to pacify her. 

“I am relaxed,” Rey started to reply, though the last word faded into a little peep as Ben lifted her legs, one at a time, and hitched them over his shoulders. 

She glanced down and saw his head tilt to kiss the inside of her thigh, planting the shadows of little love bites as he went, and realized she hadn’t really been relaxed at all until that moment. Which was weird, because Ben was looking at her like she was his favorite meal and he was lucky for the privilege of a taste. His eyes flicked up to her face for such a brief moment she wondered if they really had at all—and then his mouth whispered over her mound, then lower until he was sucking at her labia. He was gentle at first, but the pressure grew more insistent by degrees with each squeeze and tug of his lips, each light pass of his tongue through her folds. Too much by degrees; too slowly.

“More.” 

It was only after she heard the word that she realized it was her voice saying it. And, well, “ _Fuck_. Solo, more—don’t tease me.”

She thought she heard a low, knowing chuckle. If he was smug, fine, she’d let him have this one. After all, he’d let her change his mind about the plunge. Even enough exchange. Or something.

His hands tightened where they had settled over her thighs as he pressed into her with greater zeal and drew the flat of his tongue in a hot, wanton stripe up the length of her cunt. He practically dove into her after that, like this was all he’d been thinking about for the last week, and hey, maybe it had been, because Rey was pretty sure every bone in her body had just dissolved and that wasn’t the sort of effect a person could simply achieve by accident. She was so lost in it that any lingering worries—was she too wet? did she taste okay? should she have shaved down there too?—were obliterated. Once or twice she offered suggestions on where he ought to focus, and he listened each time; but she soon realized that he was having fun figuring out for himself what worked best for her, and that it was far more enjoyable for her to let him.

Her right leg tightened over his shoulder and her back bowed in an untidy arch as a moan was coaxed out of her by the sensation of his lips and tongue working over her pussy with purposeful, deliberate touches. It would all have been over by now. She wouldn’t have come. She’d have said she didn’t want any more, that she was fine, or God forbid, pretended she had come, just to have it done with. 

Rey did not want this done with. Not until she’d climaxed, pressed to Ben’s face and slicking his skin with her arousal, not until she’d kissed and licked the lingering traces of herself from his pretty lips as she came down from it. She grasped at his hair, fingers tangled in the soft waves, nails digging perhaps too hard into his scalp to say that _yes this was fine more than fine he had better not stop she did not want him to stop_ until he gave a groan of pleasure and flicked his tongue over her clit. His lips pressed around it to suck, and she shuddered so hard it was all she could do to keep from bucking into him. She wondered if this was making him harder. It had to be. She wished she could reach down and touch him there.

Something slipped inside her as he eased off her clit, something thick, something long, something that curled slightly against her walls, and she gasped in surprise—though Ben seemed to miss that it was a good surprise. He huffed and twitched, then slowed and pulled away to steal a look at her and speak. 

“Shit. Rey, I’m—” His arm moved, and she realized as she felt the thick-long-curled-thing slide free of her—it had just been one of his fingers. Obviously. For fuck's sake, she was a mess tonight, and it was all his fault. “I like to use my hands.” 

She fucking bet he did. For some reason she only then noticed that all the lights were on. She could see what a disarray she had made of his hair, and how flushed his face was, and the sheen of her wetness on his chin and jaw, on the bridge of his nose, and fuck, she— 

“That okay?” He licked his lips, a slow swipe of his tongue that seemed to last forever. 

Why wasn’t that tongue in her right now?

Rey gave a sharp and probably far too enthusiastic nod, staring almost longingly at his fingers. “As long as you aren't stopping at one.”

He did not stop at one, and between the continued expertise of his mouth and the stolid, steady glide of his fingers in and out, smooth pads stroking the soft spots deep inside, Rey was not long in waiting for her wish of a few minutes before. Ben was buried nose and chin when she came, his fingers to the knuckle, and she was nothing if not vocally approving as her climax rushed over her in a euphoric wave that left her weightless and electric and collapsing half off the sofa. She didn’t even care that he had to pull back and physically shift her a little to keep her from ending up on the floor altogether. And anyway, it brought him closer to her face again, which was great because she really did want to kiss him now, just as he was, smeared and dewed over. 

If he was surprised by such a thorough change of heart on her part, he didn’t show it, and he surely didn’t have any complaints when she grabbed him roughly by the shoulders and kissed him until she had no choice but to break for a breath. 

“So you thought that was generally acceptable, I’m guessing.” He joined her on the couch again, passing a palm over his mouth and chin a few times, and let her cuddle up on top of him as her racing pulse finally began to settle.

“You can do that to me again any time you like,” she said after as she a fingernail along the edge of the hickey on his chest a few moments later. “Though maybe not in the breakroom at Scum; we might cause a scandal.”

“Good idea. Boundaries.” 

He huffed a short laugh, quirked an eyebrow, and swatted at her rump again. This time she only gave a grunt of amused annoyance and relaxed into him as his hand lingered there to caress her. She could feel his cock through his sweatpants, pressing near her right thigh, and gave him a gentle nudge with her hips. 

“Guess your fears about the cold water earlier were unfounded. Everything down there in working order? Nothing receding into places it’s not meant to be?”

She saw his eyes dart as he tried to figure out what she was talking about; then he smirked. “Ah. I was thinking you could tell me.”

Rey didn’t even particularly care anymore if they stayed here on the couch or relocated to his bedroom. She lifted her head to catch him with a slow kiss, then murmured against his cheek. “What do you like?”

❖

Rey thought she might be catching feelings, just a little, and to her surprise it didn’t feel like the end of the world. It was that sort of middle ground—it still felt risky, but safer than she thought it might. She liked Ben. He had made it very clear, explicitly and implicitly, that he liked her. And she liked _this_ , what they seemed to be establishing between them.

She supposed they would probably have to talk about it; lay out actual rules. Maybe before the new year. It would depend on how many more times in the upcoming week she found herself here. How many more times she found herself lounging on his couch with him after she’d ridden him in his bedroom hard enough to set the headboard shuddering against the wall and let him play with her breasts until she came again; after they’d showered and had a bit too much fun with that shower oil of his; after she’d spent far too long trying to teach him how to properly use chopsticks as they finally ate their Chinese food in the kitchen. She’d started to think after a while that he only wanted an excuse for her to touch his hands as they ate—she did not need an excuse.

He was still messing with the chopsticks. They may have been useless to him for noodles and rice, but he was proving annoyingly adept at using them to pluck snacks out of the bowl in Rey’s lap.

“Cheeto?”

She turned her head minutely, keeping her eyes on the subtitles (it turned out her IKEA-Swedish was indeed useless when it came to understanding mystery-thrillers about sinister sentient forests), and opened her mouth to accept the offered snack. If she didn’t, she suspected Ben would keep prodding her in the cheek with it. 

“Thanks,” she said as she munched. She was sitting on the couch with him, more or less reclined between his legs, _cuddling_ with him, letting him feed her. Those alarm bells from earlier had ceased functioning at all hours ago. The tentative serenity that had started to hum in their place was foreign, but nice. “Not sure if I’ve mentioned this yet, but your taste in holiday television is really weird.”

His torso quaked once against her back when he huffed in amusement. “Would you rather be watching one of the many cliched Christmas movies everyone’s seen a million times?”

“Everyone’s seen them a million times because they’re classics. Surely you could at least have found some creepy, obscure Swedish movie about evil Christmas trees.” She heard him chuckle again and watched him poke through the bowl with the chopsticks. After a few moments she grabbed a few pieces of popcorn, nimbly avoiding getting pinched. “D’you mind if I stay tonight?”

“I thought that was kind of implied already. You should.”

Rey nodded silently, relieved and trying to prod a wayward kernel from between her molars. She was relieved he’d said yes—God what if he hadn’t? So much for that hum of serenity.—and even more relieved that she’d arrived with a tote bag cache of overnight necessities in the backseat of her car.

“Hey, uh.” Ben’s arm circled her waist loosely as he shifted beneath her to adjust a pillow behind his back. He waited for her to settle against him again before he continued; his arm remained around her. “I wanted to ask you something.”

She was glad she was facing away from him, because she was positive she had paled. He was going to ask her if this might be the start of something between them. And she had no idea what to say. It could be. Maybe. But she didn’t want to have to answer that right now. The fact that the idea had begun to appeal to her at all was scary in its own right and she hadn’t finished grappling with it yet. 

“Okay.” 

If he asked her now, she’d ruin it all. She knew it.

“How come you were spending tonight by yourself?” 

The tension dispelled so instantly she was certain he must have felt it. Yet it was sort of a personal question; it should have been just as bad as what she had expected. It wasn’t, though. She didn’t mind. Ben cleared his throat and rambled on before she could even inhale to reply.

“I mean. You sort of already know I— Family visits aren’t really on the table for me.” She’d gotten the gist of that from him a week or so ago, when she’d still been trying to weasel out a way to sway him on the plunge. He hadn’t been overly detailed, but she knew now that it had involved a fight with his parents over something to do with religion, and some then-unaddressed anger issues that had culminated in a physical altercation and a declaration that he had no interest in seeing them again. “But you seem . . . uh. Pretty well-adjusted. Like you’d have something nice to go home to. Visit. Um. Too personal?”

Rey snorted. ‘Pretty well-adjusted’ was not a term she would self-apply. “No. It’s . . . fine. Er. I don’t visit family for the holidays.”

“They’re in England?”

“Mm.” She shook her head and flicked a piece of popcorn across the bowl. “No family. No anyone, really.”

He tensed, and she could swear she could feel him grow warmer through the back of her shirt. “Oh. Shit. Sorry.”

She shrugged. It wasn’t something she was ashamed of or bothered much by people knowing. But it never came up; not exactly a fun party ice-breaker. No one had ever asked before. 

“Don’t be. I was five, my parents basically abandoned me, I grew up in foster care. Not really one of the lucky ones. Nothing ever stuck. But not one of the ones you hear about on true crime specials, either. I wasn't . . . living in the cupboard under the stairs. I was cared for.”

Just that no one ever cared or stayed for very long.

“Huh.” He breathed in through his teeth, like she’d jabbed him with an elbow and knocked the wind out of him. “That’s— Yeah. Okay.” He huffed. “I promise I’m still capable of multisyllabic communication.”

“Clearly. Very impressive.” She shook her head and nudged back against him. “I assure you it’s not that compelling. I didn’t . . . beat up my dad.”

“Uncle,” he corrected.

“Right. Not that either.”

A silence stretched, punctuated only by the somewhat dreary sound of the ending theme of yet another episode of Ben's show, and threatened to become awkward.

“Thanks for telling me,” he said, shifting beneath her. 

“Sure. It’s not a secret or anything. Just not really a thing I talk about unless someone asks. And then they do and then you tell them and you can tell they sort of regret it.”

“I don’t regret it.”

“I know.”

“I appreciate that you—” He broke off. She heard him fidgeting with the chopsticks and wanted to tell him to put them damn things down already. “This kind of shit’s not really part of . . . whatever we’ve been doing, is all I mean. You could’ve told me to fuck off with the personal stuff, but you didn’t. So, thanks.”

Rey gave a morbid chuckle. “If I told you to fuck off about the personal stuff I’d be a total hypocrite. Let’s be honest with ourselves, we’ve been getting into personal stuff all month.”

“Mostly because you were so goddamn persistent about the plunge thing—“ he reminded her. “Which, by the way, I’m still convinced you did not enjoy as much as you claimed.”

“You still really think that’s why? I told you last night . . .” 

When he didn’t jump in to fill the silence, she drew a deep breath and crawled enough out of his lap that she could shift around to face him, her legs folded neatly between them. 

“I didn’t need to become . . . _friends_ with you just to convince to to do some stupid office thing.” God, what was she saying? But now she’d started and she couldn’t stop, and he was staring at her, and for once she wished he would interrupt, but he didn’t, so— “I didn’t need to start looking forward to seeing you every day in the breakroom or catching you on your way out at night so I could talk to you about what we’ve been reading, or what got me into drawing, or . . . or your very distressing opinions on the last _Avengers_ movie.”

_Thanos was most certainly not right!_

“I did all that because I really do like you. Ben. A lot.” She looked at her hands, with a little bemused shake of her head. “It’s not even the sex, honestly. Which, really . . . would be more than enough to convince any rational being to keep you around.”

“Ah yeah, I remember your rave reviews of my kissing abilities; ‘You’re actually not bad,’ I think it was? Burnt into my memory.”

“Words are not my forte in heated moments,” she excused herself, fighting to be serious and not roll her eyes or give in to that smirk dimpling his right cheek. “I think what I’m doing a shit job at saying it that . . . I like that I’m getting to spend a holiday with you. And I hope it isn’t the last time we do this. And I hope that doesn’t make this weird.” 

The smirk was flickering away, replaced by one of those open, rather earnest looks she’d been noticing more often and was only now beginning to feel truly receptive to. 

“It doesn’t sound like I had much competition,” he opined. She smacked his knee; he smiled slowly. “But, the feeling is mutual. You think I started hanging around the Keurig because I like that shit? I went to see you. I bought fucking peppermint mocha K-Cups at Trader Joe’s because they were the cheapest ones; they just gave me an excuse.” 

Rey had had her suspicions, for sure. Yet him saying it like that—hearing him explain how he’d actually gone out of his way to devise a way to talk to her, because apparently he couldn’t have gone and done so like a normal person—made her blush anyway. Like an idiot. 

“Wait, you don’t like peppermint mochas?” And now she _felt_ like an idiot, for saying that, because who the hell cared? His taste in over-sweetened coffee drinks was a nonissue right now.

He must also have thought that was a strange thing to home in on, because he gave her a puzzled look and then shrugged. “I guess I do now, but I’ll be glad for the break.” 

“Why didn’t you, you know . . . talk to me? I was across the office every day.”

“You only ever came by for work stuff. And I’m not good at coming up with things to say. It didn’t seem like the place to demonstrate to you how bad I am at flirting.”

Well, that was pretty true, actually. Rey nodded with a small smile of agreement. She wasn’t the best at starting things off herself. Case in point: whatever the hell was going on right now. Two people with communication issues dancing around . . . themselves.

Ben sighed and scrubbed his hands over his face a few times and then through his hair, as if doing so might help him organize whatever was going on inside his head. “Anyway. I overheard you talking to them in the breakroom, about the plunge. And then you weren't remotely subtle about it. I knew why you were suddenly so interested in getting friendly the next day, but, I don’t know. I didn’t even care. I felt like it was the best thing that had happened to me all year because suddenly you were there all the time.”

Wow, she had really started something here, hadn’t she? Rey was flushed again, trying not to smile, still feeling very foolish. Hoping he would say something else because she had no idea how to follow that. Here she’d thought she had probably been driving him mad the whole time; but he hadn’t been merely tolerating it. He truly hadn’t wanted it to end. If it wasn’t so convoluted and ridiculous, it would almost have been sweet. Okay, it was still sort of sweet, and it left her chuffed to bits. She was done for.

“So. Yeah.” He expelled a long breath, hard enough that it blew the flyaways out of her face. “I like that you're here too. I usually wouldn’t have cared, but . . . it’s good not to be alone. With you.”

“It is.” 

Rey thought she’d probably only had one truly daring act in her today, and had used it up that morning at the beach. But this felt close, and didn’t require nearly the amount of daring she’d thought it might. To the contrary, it felt quite safe. The beginning of a beginning, at the end of a year. She hoped that was an adequate way to sum it up for tonight—’whatever they’d been doing,’ as he had put it. Not being alone. Being together.

She grabbed the bowl from her lap and slid it onto the table, then slid herself back over him, legs curled across his lap and her head resting on his shoulder. His arms faltered a little as they wrapped around her, but then they settled, and they were warm and solid, and Rey thought she might well fall asleep right there. A better idea occurred to her as the opening credits for another episode began to roll. She wrinkled her nose— _this_ would absolutely put her to sleep if measures were not taken.

“Hey, after this, want to play _Smash_?” She blinked at the screen and hastily qualified, “Like, actually play the game.”

“Hate this show that much, huh?”

“I’ll let you win. Consider it a Christmas gift.”

Ben laughed darkly and prodded her in the ribs, right where he knew was a particularly ticklish spot. When she’d finished squirming, he shrugged. “Sure. I’ll try to come up with some way to reciprocate by tomorrow morning.”

“Don’t rush it. Good things take time.” 

He would have plenty of it.


End file.
